Adobe : Microsoft and Change Healthcare Deliver Next-Gen Patient Experience

The coronavirus pandemic has changed many things for consumers, and in healthcare, things will never be the same again. Digital engagement is now business-critical, as opposed to a nice-to-have feature.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic upended the status quo, consumers asked for a better experience when dealing with healthcare providers, one that is comparable to the online shopping experience offered by retailers and other customer-obsessed industries. A new platform introduced by Change Healthcare in partnership with Adobe and Microsoft is a step towards achieving this goal, offering healthcare organizations and their patients a way to streamline the patient experience so all stages of the user experience can be handled online with ease.

Change Healthcare, a technology company that specializes in data and analytics solutions for healthcare organizations, combined its data expertise with Adobe's HIPAA-ready customer experience tools to develop the Digital Patient Experience Manager, a patient engagement platform. Through this tool, the management of care-those instructions for care and information handed out in the doctor's office-can now be addressed digitally. That is the wheelhouse of this program, which enables doctors to communicate with patients, for patients to make buying decisions, schedule appointments and make payments, and then have all of that information passed on to the insurance company.

Adobe solutions were incorporated directly into the Change Healthcare platform, which resides on Microsoft's Azure platform on the cloud. It is the first time Adobe tools have been inserted directly into a custom-developed platform, instead of deployed as part of a marketing platform. The CHC platform uses Adobe Experience Manager Managed Services as the content management and delivery tool, and Marketo Engage marketing automation to handle communications delivery such as appointment reminders and follow-ups through text, email or push notifications. Adobe Analytics is then used for data processing and analytics of non-sensitive data. Together the three Adobe applications manage the lifecycle of content, deliver content through all of the different channels that customers may be engaged in, monitor how that content is being used or consumed and then trigger events based on those behaviors.

What makes the Change Healthcare platform unique is that it is the connective tissue between all the different players in the healthcare ecosystem. It improves on traditional patient portals by enabling doctors to communicate directly with patients, patients with doctors, doctors with insurance companies, insurance companies directly to their plan members or their patients. The data gets passed between all of these different players in the ecosystem to provide a single point of contact, as opposed to being forced to go to three, four or five different places in order to get medical information.

Consumers can comparison shop using applications such as Shop, Book and Pay™, which allows them to check provider pricing and reviews, book appointments and pay for services beforehand. A Virtual Front Desk app lets patients and staff handle a contactless check-in process including queue management and check-in forms via the patient's device, which can also receive notifications on when to enter the facility-an advantage in social-distancing situations.

For providers, the platform streamlines the post-visit communications and helps improve collections from cash and high-deductible plans. The Care Cost SE app automatically sends patients email or text messages with a shopping cart including any additional actions such as follow-up appointments or referrals for further tests, so they can book and pay in advance.

The standard model of engagement with patients is not viable now, as virtual care has become the main channel for day-to-day health care. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, telehealth visits represented less than 5% of total doctor visits, but increased about 200% in the first 60 days of lockdown. This increase has been so rapid that the Federal Communications Commission made $200 million in grants available to hospitals and doctors' offices to help them ramp up their telehealth services in order to meet demand.

According to Revive Health's weekly COVID-19 Roundup dated March 18, 2020, 85% of health care consumers don't know how to go about getting their non-urgent health care taken care of when facing current shelter-at-home guidelines and 50% of those consumers are actually afraid to go to any type of medical center out of fear of being exposed to COVID-19. Those two things combined, point directly to why telehealth or virtual care is exploding.

Through the launch of this platform, Adobe alongside Change Healthcare and Microsoft are finding solutions to engage patients where otherwise it would require the patient calling, emailing or coming to the office. This kind of continuous digital engagement enables the payor and the provider to stay in the inner circle of activity, as opposed to the engagement being very episodic or disconnected, as in the past. The results of this proactive engagement are cost savings for the payer, the provider and the patient, and reduced need for in-person visits resulting in better outcomes for all in the end.