The numbers are in: Patient engagement drives better quality of care for patients and better experiences for patients and physicians alike. Promoting patient engagement has taken off in the past few years. This has been especially true since the Affordable Care Act and changes to Medicare payments put an emphasis on patients’ experience and quality of care over number of services provided.
As you’ll see, electronic health records (EHRs), online portals, and mobile health (mHealth) apps play important roles in how you engage with your patients today and into the future. Let’s take a look at 21 statistics that demonstrate how important and effective patient engagement can be.
Electronic Health Records
- Nearly three-quarters of patients said that if it was easy to electronically access their own healthcare data, it would improve their understanding of their health and patient-to-physician communication.1
- About 80% of patients who can access their own EHRs actually use that health information.2
- Nearly two-thirds of patients who don’t have access to their EHRs believe that health information is important to have.2
- Concerns about remote access to EHRs remain—75% of patients in one survey said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned regarding privacy and security of their online health records.3
Methods for Patient Engagement
- Facilitating ongoing communication between patients and physicians via apps and online portal can improve engagement rates by 60% or higher.4
- The global mHealth solutions market (including apps, mHealth services, and connected medical devices) is expected to grow to $59.15 billion by 2020, surging by an annual rate of 33.4% during that time.5
- Apps for chronic care management are predicted to be the fastest-growing segment of healthcare apps through 2020.5
- About 93% of physicians feel mHealth apps can boost a patient’s healthcare outcome.6
- 89% of physicians said they would likely recommend an mHealth app to their patients.6
- Almost two-thirds of physicians rank medication adherence as a key health concern that could be remedied by an mHealth app linked to a patient’s EHR, while more than half said diabetes (54%) and preventative care (52%).6
- Texting patients can increase medication adherence for chronic disease patients from 50% to 67.8%, or a 17.8% overall increase.7
- Patients in their 60s show no difference in their adoption rate for portal accounts when compared to patients in their 30s through 50s, and patients in their 20% and 70s have a similar portal registration rate.8
- Mobile-friendly communication is crucial for patient engagement, as people use a mobile device or tablet for 57% of email opens.9
- Though 66 of the 100 largest U.S. hospitals offer patients mHealth apps, patient usage clocks in at only 2%, namely because the apps fail to provide patients with the functions and user experience patients are looking for.10
- That 2% adoption rate of hospital mHealth apps could cost each hospital more than $100 million annually in lost revenue.10
Value-added Care
- Medicare payment updates that reward quality of care delivered rather than quantity of services, which include patients’ experience and engagement with care, is estimated to save about $85 billion through 2016.11
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requires that physicians and hospitals provide online access to health information for 50% of all unique patients, and more than 5% of patients have to actually access the data.3
- Based on patient satisfaction scores, in fiscal year 2015, hospitals could have lost or gained up to 1.5% of their Medicare payments. Over the next few years, that percentage increases to 2% of reimbursement dollar value.12
Patient Engagement Results
- After employing multimedia programs meant to help patients understand complex health information or information regarding self-care or upcoming procedures, 86% of 29 participating hospitals improved doctor-to-patient communication, and 69% improved their overall rating by 4% or more.12
- Increased online patient involvement can result in a 90% satisfaction rate for both patients and physicians.13
- Patients plugged into an online portal were more likely to receive preventative tests and screenings, including nearly one in nine patients more likely to receive colorectal cancer screenings and a slightly higher rate for mammogram screenings.14
Any facts of your own you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments!
Many thanks to the sources of our statistics: HealthMine, National Partnership for Women & Families, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Orca Health, MarketsandMarkets, eClinicalWorks, JAMA Network, athenahealth, Experian, Accenture, Emmi Solutions, California Health Care Foundation, and Kaiser Permanente.
- http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/despite-push-for-transparent-medical-records-53-of-consumers-cant-access-electronic-health-data-healthmine-survey-finds-300195602.html
- http://go.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/HIT_Making_IT_Meaningful_National_partnership_February_2.pdf
- http://www.healthpcp.com/content/blog/55-cms-statistics-from-ahima
- http://www.mhealthnews.com/news/using-survey-patient-engagement-tool
- http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/mhealth-apps-and-solutions.asp
- https://www.eclinicalworks.com/pr-eclinicalworks-invests-25-million/
- http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2484905
- https://hbr.org/2015/06/using-data-to-increase-patient-engagement-in-health-care
- http://www.televox.com/blog/outreach-opportunities/two-stats-that-support-email-as-an-engagement-opportunity/
- http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/poor-healthcare-apps-could-cost-hospitals-100-million-year-accenture-says
- https://www.cms.gov/apps/files/aca-savings-report-2012.pdf
- http://hitconsultant.net/2015/07/23/patient-engagement-programs-increases-hcahps-scores/
- http://www.chcf.org/~/media/MEDIA%20LIBRARY%20Files/PDF/PDF%20M/PDF%20MeasuringImpactPatientPortals.pdf
- http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/kaiser-online-tools-increase-likelihood-patients-will-receive-preventative-care
