Terri Embry-Drummond
May 27 2022
Reading Time: 3 minutes
By: Terri Embry-Drummond, RN, BSBA, Customer Success, CitusHealth
Whether you’re trying to collect data in a form, get a document signed, or simply ask a question—when it comes to communicating with patients and family caregivers, the most popular traditional methods to reach them have been phone and email. But there are two significant reasons that these methods are becoming less and less ideal, making patients hard to reach and difficult to engage.
Phone and email spam make home-based care patients hard to reach.
With spam becoming an everyday norm with both phone and email, it’s not uncommon for people to send calls to voicemail and stop checking email inboxes altogether. Messages end up getting lost and forgotten, making patients difficult to reach.
Phone and email can be unsecure methods of communication in home-based care.
While many organizations continue to communicate using phone and email, they can be risky in terms of compliance. Phone numbers can be easily verified, but leaving a voicemail requires permissions. And email is only secure when encrypted, which is complicated to arrange and often gets overlooked by organizations.
These dated methods of communication can not only fail to reach patients, but they can also fail to maintain HIPAA compliance when not used correctly. With that in mind, CitusHealth focuses on the most effective and secure communication for home-based care providers—push messages and SMS.
Click, do, done: Push messages and SMS simplify communication for home-based care
Most providers, hospitals, physician practices, etc. require portal logins to access secure communication. With CitusHealth, patients and caregivers receive push notifications that engage the recipient, prompting them to see the communication and take action to complete the form, sign the document, or answer the chat. This happens in real time to notify of anything that needs to be done to continue care—as opposed to linking to a portal that requires logging in.
Secure instant messaging also optimizes operations and allows staff to do more with less. By reaching out and reminding patients of what they need to click, do, and get done with a quick SMS, the administrative burden eases and staff can do their jobs more efficiently. The push notifications and SMS secure links provide secure methods to have a form completed or a document signed.
In the end, seamless communication leads to a trusting provider-patient relationship, which is the most successful path to true engagement. Is your home-based care organization struggling to engage patients who are difficult to reach? Schedule a CitusHealth demo today to experience the difference seamless communication can make.
