5 Patient Engagement Strategies for Healthcare Operations Teams

5 real-world patient engagement strategies (and the healthcare tech required)

Patient engagement software was among the top IT investment goals for healthcare providers in 2024. Also listed as top priorities are several operational goals that go hand-in-hand with patient engagement: optimizing healthcare workflows, improving interoperability, managing the revenue cycle effectively, improving EHR access and usability, and increasing patient access. 

Here are five patient strategies for healthcare operations teams to improve patient engagement: 

1: Improve patient-provider communication

Two-way communication is the foundation of patient engagement. Providers must be able to communicate information to patients before, during, and after their appointments. Patients need to feel comfortable asking questions and finding more information about their care plan, medical bills, and upcoming appointments. 

Healthcare providers are responsible for facilitating effective two-way communication. Healthcare staff must be trained in communication best practices that make medical information more accessible to patients: accessible language, appropriate pace, active listening, and supportive nonverbal signals that improve patients’ comfort and confidence.

In addition to communicating the right message, providers need to choose the best communication channel and use of staff resources. Successful provider-patient communication can come in many forms: 

• Interpersonal or automated – Automated notifications and reminders can significantly reduce patient no-shows and improve response rates for pre-appointment registration and post-care follow-ups. 
• Asynchronous, real-time, or self-service – Documentation, correspondence, test results, and care plans can be uploaded and maintained in an EHR system for asynchronous updates. Patients can securely access their data in a patient portal and contact providers across the continuum of care, reducing the risk of errors, gaps, or delays in communication.
• Text, email, phone call, or other notification – Patient engagement platforms personalize communications to reflect patient preferences, such as how they wish to be contacted, or what language support or translation services they may need.

Look for mobile healthcare technology that supports clear and secure communication between patients and providers. Scheduling tools should include automated reminders according to the patient’s preferred communication method; patient portals should have easy forms to submit a question; and mobile healthcare workers need an easy way to document patient questions for quick follow-up. 

With medical and administrative information accessible to their complete care team in one integrated system, patients can actively participate in their care and access telehealth resources as needed. Providers can view results, manage care, and connect with patients for the best possible health outcomes.

2: Proactively educate patients

Health literacy is vital to patient adherence: the better patients understand their condition and treatment plan, the more likely they are to follow clinical recommendations. Empowered patients who can access and understand their own health data communicate more effectively with their providers. However, there’s little evidence that relying on patients to proactively seek out health information or participate in educational opportunities is very effective. Patients don’t know what they don’t know, so providers must take the lead.

Providers can prevent medical errors and foster adherence by proactively educating their patients, particularly through electronic communications, as well as by phone or mail. One study found that providers who offered digital patient engagement tools for older adults to educate them about potential drug interactions saw improved patient engagement and a reduction in adverse events—proving more effective than a printed information booklet.

Several types of healthcare technology can improve patient education:

• Patient portals are a great way to offer easy access to patient education resources. Adding a prominent link to related content—for example, a walkthrough of medical billing terms highlighted on the billing section of the portal—improves patients’ ability to educate themselves on important topics. 
• Remote patient monitoring and other advanced technologies can help providers identify opportunities for patient education. By proactively monitoring patient care and flagging potential issues, providers can reach out with the right resource(s) at the right time.
• Mobile workforce apps allow home healthcare workers and other mobile providers to document patient questions and send follow-up communications with relevant resources.

Timely and effective patient education helps patients understand their treatment plan, engage with providers, and self-manage their care.

3: Offer patient navigation services

Patient navigation services address barriers that prevent vulnerable or disadvantaged populations from accessing healthcare. 

These barriers could be a lack of reliable transportation, communication or language issues, resource instability, substance use, limited access to technology, financial limitations, social isolation, or other social determinants of health. Patient navigators help overcome these challenges and increase patient access to preventive, primary, and specialty care.

There are clinical and non-clinical aspects to patient navigation, bringing healthcare providers and community advocates together to reach patients in need. Since the first patient navigation program was offered in 1990, this patient-centered concept has gained traction, becoming a key aspect of patient engagement policy. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 included patient navigation programming, and as of 2023, CMS has included new reimbursement coding for health related social needs, assessment of social determinants of health, community health integration, and principle illness navigation. 

Patient navigation services are integral to improving patient engagement. Better communication between patient and provider reveals opportunities for providers. For example, a patient facing food instability struggles to take their medication regularly, or a patient who wants to attend medical appointments but lacks reliable transportation. Patient navigation services can guide these patients to relevant community resources, social support, telehealth options, and mobile health clinics so they can receive care or follow through on their care plan.

Patient navigation services save lives by making preventive medicine, primary and specialty care, and chronic disease management accessible to patients who would otherwise not receive necessary health screenings or treatment.

4: Build trust between patients and providers

Trust is at the center of patient engagement: it’s an essential part of clear communication, meaningful health literacy, and successful patient navigation. Patients must be confident they will be heard, they can readily access services and information they need, and they can rely on their care team. Providers depend on efficient healthcare operations management, timely and transparent access to patient data in EHR, and mobile-first access to deliver personalized care to patients in their preferred setting. 

Technology helps cultivate and sustain trust across the patient engagement framework. 

• Smart scheduling offers accurate job matching that accommodates patient preferences, ensures providers arrive on time, and updates patients when providers are running late. 
• Route optimization improves the timing of mobile or home care delivery, increasing appointment capacity for providers, and reducing patient delays and no-shows. 
• Robust patient portals foster health literacy, and encourage patient adherence and appointment attendance. 

As mobile health tech streamlines engagement and operations through a single source of truth, patients and providers can create truly collaborative plans of care. 

5: Choose health tech that bridges distributed and centralized care settings

As distributed care becomes more prevalent, on-site and virtual experiences need to be streamlined through one system so that there are no gaps in the continuum of care. Mobile healthcare technology offers consistent scheduling and appointment management for in-person facilities and telehealth services through a single platform. It also integrates EHR, patient portals, payment platforms, and self-scheduling into a unified, mobile-first framework that provides a user-friendly experience for patients and providers.

Better utilization of patient engagement platforms directly informs patient experience: with greater autonomy to participate in their own care, patients have access to earlier diagnosis, better preventive care, and consistent follow-ups. 

Operations teams must choose mobile health tech that supports a holistic patient engagement program across the continuum of care: 

• It must provide channels of effective communication, interactive patient education, and access to patient navigation services in a secure, virtual space. 
• It must facilitate more appointments with fewer delays with AI-assisted scheduling. 
• It must comprehensively support telehealth by providing real-time aggregation of patient data. 
• It must be user-friendly, so that patients can initiate contact with providers, proactively self-schedule care, and participate in health education. 
• It must be securely interoperable with existing tech stacks: as once-disparate streams of health data, administrative responsibility, and patient experience are integrated, healthcare operations managers can study performance and strategically improve revenue cycle management. 

Healthcare technology is evolving rapidly: watch for trends like the integration of AI in healthcare operations management, digital therapeutics, and extended reality, alongside ever more robust data analytics and remote patient monitoring capabilities. Keeping pace with the digital transformation of healthcare requires software that can scale with operations management without compromising patient engagement, even as the point of care is shifting.