What You Should Know:
– Notable, the leading intelligent automation company for healthcare, today announced the results of a new patient survey, highlighting that legacy digital solutions and manual workflows limit patients’ ability to access care.
– 61% of patients surveyed said that they skipped going to the doctor in the past year because scheduling an appointment was too much of a hassle.
Evaluating Why Patient Portals Fail to Meaningfully Expand Access to Care
Notable is the leading intelligent automation company for healthcare. Engaging tens of millions of patients per year, Notable is leveraged by leading health systems, including Intermountain Healthcare and Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). Healthcare providers use Notable to identify and engage more patients in need of care by automating hundreds of repetitive workflows across patient intake, population health, authorizations, scheduling, and referrals.
This survey data from Notable was gathered as part of the company’s annual State of Automation Report, established in 2022 to benchmark the attitudes of patients toward technology and automation. Conducted by OnePoll March 3-5, 2022, it had 1,005 patient respondents.
“Our survey data shows that when care is difficult to access, many patients simply don’t go to the doctor,” said Carle Falk, Head of Research for Notable. “People aren’t skipping doctor visits because they’re confused about test results or worried about a procedure. They’re avoiding medical visits because the appointment-booking process is confusing and takes far too much time and effort.”
Early digital scheduling approaches have fallen short because they still require manual calls and scheduler intervention. These introduce patient hassles, while simultaneously limiting access given health systems’ challenges in filling open support services roles.
To illustrate, 70% of respondents agreed that in the past year they have tried to schedule a healthcare appointment online via a patient portal, website or an app but were redirected to call a phone number to finish scheduling. In addition to challenges with scheduling appointments, the survey revealed increasing patient frustration with time spent waiting to see their doctor. Respondents reported spending an average of 28.8 minutes waiting before they can see a doctor, up from an average of 18.2 minutes in 2018 – in spite of increased technology investments by healthcare providers to streamline pre-visit registration and intake.
Because legacy digital solutions and manual workflows have failed to meet patients’ needs, leading healthcare providers have turned to intelligent automation to serve more patients in need of care. With Notable, health systems are digitizing and automating labor-intensive and repetitive tasks that otherwise get in the way of patient accessing care. This includes appointment scheduling and confirmation, pre-visit registration, prior authorization management, and referral management.
While 63% of patients said that their healthcare provider’s digital tools failed to meet their expectations, health systems using Notable report over 95% patient satisfaction. “With solutions like Notable, healthcare organizations can truly get out in front of time-consuming challenges like intake and scheduling, which are clearly a pain point for consumers,” said Falk. “And by eliminating this sort of administrative overhead, we’re enabling healthcare providers to focus on their most important priority, which is quality patient care.”
