IMPROVING PATIENT ENGAGEMENT AND EFFICIENCY WITH A MOBILE STRATEGYBest Practices in Hospital Technology from Phunware

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.Many hospitals are losing revenue and receiving poor reviews due to process inefficiencies that can often result in missed or delayed appointments and patient dissatisfaction. Additionally, with the influx of newly insured health care patients resulting from the Affordable Care Act’s new regulations, it is more of a challenge than ever before to guide patients through the hospital system in an efficient manner. Clear design and good informational resources within the hospital can help visitors and patients to some extent, but many still require additional support in order to have a stress-free experience while navigating through medical facilities. Hospitals are already filled with anxious visitors and patients facing potential diagnoses and treatment options. Trying to find their way through complex facilities only exacerbates this anxiety. The last thing they need to worry about is how to get where they need to go without getting lost. Common visitor problems can be addressed and corrected with the development of a comprehensive engagement strategy. Including a mobile application as part of this strategy can seamlessly connect patients and visitors with hospital staff and provide them with real-

time access to important information, which can increase a hospital’s efficiency in managing the flow of visitor traffic and increase patient satisfaction. To provide a high-quality experience for patients and visitors alike, consider the benefits of developing a branded mobile application with sophisticated location-aware and wayfinding features. A branded mobile application can enhance the visitor experience with features including:

• Facilitate communications with patients by

automating appointment reminders through

a variety of methods (phone, text, and email

messaging) - this has been shown to reduce the

number of missed appointments by as much as 36%

• Utilize beacon and Bluetooth technology to create

location-aware alerts and messages that appear

when a visitor travels to a specific location

• Provide navigational features to help visitors

navigate to the correct parking lot and building

• Provide in-building wayfinding features to help

visitors find specific offices within the hospital

• Automate the front desk check-in and check-out

process

• Provide accurate and on-time information about

doctors and locations around the hospital

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In this white paper, we’ll examine how hospitals can use mobile technology to enhance the patient and visitor experience and drive new revenue through increased efficiency.

Over the last five years, the growth of mobile data usage has skyrocketed: Today, more than 58% of Americans have smartphones.[1] Additionally, by 2015 one in three people will have a health-related application on their phone. The proliferation of mobile devices has changed the way we engage with the world around us. Mobile users are not just using their smartphones to check email or connect to social networks; they are using their devices to connect with and learn about the world around them. In fact, with the introduction of health sensors and wearables such as the Jawbone UP24 and GPS applications, many people are even using mobile technology to monitor their own health: 70 percent of doctors say that patients in their care are self-monitoring data with the help of mobile devices.[2] Many commercial businesses, including retailers, hotels, and event venues, have developed branded applications to facilitate communication and interaction with their visitors. However, few hospital organizations have considered developing a mobile application to improve the patient experience and streamline efficiency. Currently, only around 3 percent of hospitals in the United States offer branded applications for patients and their families.[3]

1 http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/mobile-technology-fact-sheet/2 http://manhattanresearch.com/News-and-Events/Press-Releases/physicians-embrace-patient-self-tracking 3 http://mobihealthnews.com/research/205-hospital-branded-apps-for-patients/

4 http://informalscience.org/images/research/VSA-a0a1q1-a_5730.pdf

Hospital patients and visitors frequently complain about elements of the hospital experience related to poor navigation. In fact, over 30% of first-time visitors reported confusion according to a 1995 study.[4] Many hospitals have large campuses with multiple buildings and confusing layouts, often leading to late check-in or missed appointments when visitors are unable to locate their destinations.

Transportation can also be a problem: visitors do not always know the best route to the hospital, or which parking structures are closest to the building they need to access. Visitors with scheduled tests or procedures rarely receive detailed advance directions about where to park or what room to go to for their procedures. As a result, they often have difficulty finding a parking spot. After entering the building, they may have trouble finding the correct office, and potentially miss their appointments. In addition to causing anxiety and frustration among visitors, late or missed appointments are detrimental to hospital organizations, as they

The Drive Towards Mobile Engagement

Streamline the Patient Experience with Digital Navigation

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reduce healthcare providers’ capacity to take on additional appointments.

Kevin B. Mahoney, chief administrative officer for the University of Pennsylvania Health System, admitted in a Wall Street Journal article that wayfinding is “a challenge we have not yet 100% solved” at his institution. “People can always find the Gap but it’s not that easy to find Radiology.”[5] A branded mobile application can incorporate sophisticated GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi navigational data and wayfinding tools, enabling patients and visitors to travel from point to point with a digital guide. With a mobile application, navigational features can be enabled such as:

• Turn-by-turn directions from the visitor’s home

to the closest parking structure to their clinician’s

office, which includes real-time data about route

closures, traffic, construction, and other potential

complications

• In-building wayfinding services that help visitors

navigate through the hospital to their appointment

locations via text alerts or voice navigation

• Beacon technology that can instantly identify

mobile users as they enter the building, and provide

them with custom alerts and navigational services

• Interactive maps to help patients and visitors learn

about available facilities within the institution

(including cafes and gift shops)

• Wayfinding services for nearby restaurants,

lodging, and other services for visitors

• Analytics to help understand user engagement and

solution effectiveness

By helping patients and visitors navigate smoothly from one location to another, the stress and anxiety they may be feeling about the hospital

experience is reduced, while simultaneously increasing the flow of traffic through a hospital’s facilities by enabling practitioners to reduce lag time between appointments.

Miscommunication is another issue that can cause problems for both patients and hospitals regarding appointment times and locations. Patients often arrive at a clinician’s office to a long wait time: The typical waiting time for a doctor’s office is 22 minutes.[6] A Harris Interactive survey found that 63 percent of patients consider a doctor’s office waiting room time to be “very” or “extremely” important to their overall experience.[7] As waiting time increases, patient satisfaction drops, and that could have a negative impact on a hospital’s Medicare reimbursement rate. Additionally, miscommunication between patients and providers can result in missed appointments in cases where patients do not receive proper instructions regarding scheduling or directions.

A branded mobile application can help to resolve these miscommunication problems, with features including:

• Multiple push notifications to remind patients about

appointments (including day-of-appointment

alerts)

• Messaging across multiple platforms (email, text,

and voice alerts) sharing consistent information

about appointment times and locations, with links

to in-application wayfinding services

• Real-time appointment status updates to alert

patients to scheduling changes

5 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014240527023037436045793552029790354926 http://www.hhnmag.com/display/HHN-news-article.dhtml?dcrPath=/templatedata/HF_Common/NewsArticle/data/HHN/Magazine/2013/Nov/1113HHN_Coverstory7 http://www.hhnmag.com/display/HHN-news-article.dhtml

Enhance Communications Between Patients & Staff

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• Alerts to hospital staff to let them know when

visitors have entered the building or clinician’s

office, helping them manage patient traffic

• Automated check-in and check-out via mobile

application

Clearly, creating an effective channel for automated, timely communications between the patient and the clinician’s office can reduce missed appointments and cut down office waiting times, resulting in a more positive patient experience and increased efficiency for the hospital.

BOOST REVENUES Visitor navigation and communication problems can hurt a hospital’s revenues. By implementing a comprehensive mobile strategy that serves as a guide and communication platform for visitors and patients, hospital administrators can increase their bottom line.

IMPROVE “PATIENT SATISFACTION”Recent Affordable Care Act regulations have mandated that hospitals which receive low Patient Satisfaction survey scores will receive lower reimbursement rates from Medicare. By helping patients find their way around the hospital, improving communications, and reducing patient wait time, hospitals can improve the patient experience, which can increase government reimbursement.

REDUCE MISSED APPOINTMENTSHealthcare consultant Judy Capko assesses the cost of “no show” appointments as an average of $150,000 per physician in a medical practice per year, adding up to millions of dollars of lost revenue for hospitals and large practices.[9] Offering automated reminders and improved navigation guides through a mobile application can significantly reduce the number of missed or late appointments. For instance, according to one study, 23 percent of patients who did not receive a reminder before the appointment missed the doctor’s visit, while the number of no-shows dropped by up to 10 percent in cases where the patient received a reminder.[10]

STREAMLINE ADMINISTRATIONA mobile application can be used to send automated appointment reminders, assist with directions, and manage the check-in and check-out process, among other features. These mobile capabilities can reduce the need for office assistance, providing a more consistent experience at a lower cost than hiring additional administrative staff.

STAY COMPETITIVECompetition to attract patients has only increased over the years and the recent healthcare reform changes have only magnified this trend. As hospital organizations work harder than ever to build connections within their communities, it is extremely important to consider the entire patient experience from their home to the doctor’s office. Ensuring that visitors can navigate a hospital’s campus easily is a huge step toward a positive client experience, which translates to patient loyalty. Additionally, patients who have a positive experience are more likely to refer their friends and families to a hospital. Developing a mobile application that helps patients have a better hospital experience will help that institution increase its efficiency and profitability. It’s a winning equation for both sides.

Today, a cloud-based mobile application-as-a-service platform offers technology directors a great deal of flexibility in managing and analyzing the visitor or patient experience. They can test new engagement strategies quickly to figure out what works and what doesn’t before rolling them out to all branches. Update the mobile application with content pulled from the cloud, bypassing the need to have an iOS application update approved by the

9 http://www.physicianspractice.com/pearls/stop-losing-money-no-shows10 http://www.amednews.com/article/20100628business/306289954/6/

Manage the Mobile Experience

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Apple App Store. Access real-time analytics data about the hospital’s visitors without having to wait for IT to pull reports.

Despite the many benefits and features a location-aware mobile application offers, the complexity of developing and managing them have kept many medical institutions on the sidelines—until now. The mobile device universe is currently dominated by Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems. Developing and managing a mobile application for both operating systems can be challenging, especially since there are currently six versions of Android supported on hundreds of devices with different screen sizes. Applications for either platform must be frequently updated to support new OS features and fixes, as well as to add new application content and features.

Because of this complexity, most medical institutions would have to outsource application development. In the past, a hospital may have spent $350,000 or more to develop, deploy, maintain and update a mobile application across multiple platforms (Android and iOS)—a prohibitive expense for many institutions. For larger organizations that could afford the financial expense, developing a location-aware mobile application often required getting the IT department (and perhaps other departments) heavily involved. In this scenario, the hospital’s marketing team must depend on the IT department to take on the application’s development, which the IT department must juggle along with its many other projects. The need for IT department involvement can significantly slow down the application’s development, deployment, management and updating. Marketers can influence but not control the process, especially when tools for creating or updating the mobile application’s content or analyzing user data aren’t user-friendly.

Today, a comprehensive branded mobile application can be developed for around $50,000 per year, using a ‘mobile application as a service’ platform based in the cloud. The platform should empower marketers or other non-technical staff to take control of the mobile experience, and should offer the following features and benefits:

• Automatically supports all major mobile platforms

and devices, eliminating the complexities involved

in developing for multiple devices OS.

• Simplified application development and updating

with streamlined, easy-to-use tools. The platform

should enable a hospital’s marketing team to take

control of application development, management,

and updates through simple, non-technical tools.

• Easy uploading of new content through a content

management system designed specifically for

mobile. Because content can be updated through

the cloud, it is not necessary to re-submit each

update to an application store.

• Analytics and business intelligence that enables

marketers to capture, view, analyze, and

disseminate data. Everything marketers need to

know should be consolidated into one dashboard,

allowing easy tracking of how effective the mobile

initiatives are in improving patient communications

and reducing missed appointments

• Eliminates the need for IT department involvement,

freeing up IT team members to focus on other

projects and removing obstacles for marketers in

getting an application developed, tested, deployed

and updated.

• Dramatically reduces application development

costs through a cloud-based services platform

eliminates high up-front software costs of

traditional development platforms and puts

application development in easy reach through

affordable, subscription-based models.

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With Phunware’s Multiscreen as a Service (MaaS) platform and pre-packaged, turn-key engageME solution, a location-aware, branded mobile application is now within reach of midsized and large medical institutions. Phunware’s MaaS is the first fully integrated services platform that enables hospitals to engage and streamline communications with their visitors and patients. The platform includes an end-to-end set of capabilities that enable hospitals to easily launch new mobile and multiscreen experiences or extend the capabilities of an existing experience: • Multiscreen cloud platform• Mobile analytics• Mobile content management• Location-Based Marketing & Services• Indoor Mapping and Wayfinding• Mobile Advertising Phunware engageME provides brands with a fully configurable, immersive mobile experience for Apple iOS and Google Android devices, with pre-packaged versions for shoppers, travelers, fans, patients, visitors and more. Phunware engageME uses location technology such as Beacon, high-density indoor WiFi, and GPS to enable hospitals to guide visitors and reduce their stress with highly interactive, location-based experiences.

With Phunware engageME’s easy-to-use interface, marketers are empowered to take control over creating the ultimate visitor experience via mobile. The complexity of creating and maintaining a branded mobile experience for visitors is simplified. Apps developed on the MaaS platform work across iOS and Android devices and platforms, which is traditionally an expensive and time-consuming process, and can be easily updated as operating systems evolve. Additionally, Phunware’s engageME platform can function equally well as a static kiosk. This extra functionality is critical to any mobile strategy as it allows hospitals to engage with patients who do not have a smartphone without requiring a significant additional investment. For example, elderly patients could access the same indoor navigation technology and print out directions to their doctors office.

Phunware’s brandME services group provides mobile and multi-screen strategy, design, consulting and custom development for brands and hospitals who need more than a turn-key solution. Phunware’s brandME team has a proven track record, enabling brands that include The Grove, Transamerica, Samsung, NASCAR, NFL, Edmunds.com, and many others to develop over 400 branded mobile apps to date.

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