5 Must-Have Patient Engagement Strategies in 2024

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Patient engagement is crucial to good patient experience, high patient satisfaction scores, and, most importantly, positive health outcomes.

Engaged patients invest more time and energy into their health, leading to better results and helping medical institutions save costs and resources. So, in this article, we wanted to look at the most essential patient engagement strategies you should be using right now.

Patient engagement is the desire and capability to actively participate in care in cooperation with a healthcare provider or institution to maximize outcomes or improve experiences of care. Or simply put, patient engagement is when patients actively gather information and make decisions about their health.

Patient activation is defined as a patient’s knowledge, skills, ability, and willingness to manage their health and care.

So, patient engagement and activation are two related terms. For patients to become activated, you need to engage them in taking an active part in their care. 

An engaged patient takes the actions necessary to improve and manage their health. 

Engaged patients are more likely to do regular health checkups, vaccinations, cancer and STD screenings, etc. They are more likely to eat healthy diets, exercise regularly, and avoid risky behaviors like smoking, using drugs, and drinking excessively. An engaged patient is more likely to identify a disease or diagnosis early.

So, patient engagement is vital because it results in better health outcomes for the patient.

Also, it helps to cut operational costs for healthcare organizations by reducing the number of re-admissions or patient no-shows, requiring less medical time and resources. 

Engaging your patients at every stage of their care journey is crucial. One of your patient engagement strategies should be to educate patients before they come to you, guide them while they are on their healthcare journey, and don’t forget to support them throughout aftercare.

Before your patients start their care journey, you need to inform, educate, and clarify misconceptions for them. This will help them make better medical decisions, be more confident with their treatment plan, trust their doctor more and, most importantly, save valuable time later for both HCP and the patient.

During your patient’s healthcare journey, you need to engage them by providing additional information and recommendations and answering their questions. It’s also good to include your patients in the shared decision-making process. This means you engage your patients in choosing a specific treatment plan and put them in the middle of their care. By doing so, patients may become more activated in their care management and wellness goals.

For patients to make the right decisions, you need to increase their knowledge about the diagnosis, risk factors, consequences, treatments, and prognosis. Also, patients must understand the importance of each step that must be taken during their treatment —including lifestyle changes and medication management. 

And also, don’t forget about your patients after their discharge. Your patients require support, guidance, and attention even when they leave your office. 

Patient engagement during aftercare increases commitment to aftercare instructions. Also, it helps to build trust and understanding by showing that you care about your patients even when they are not admitted and under your care.

Aftercare patient engagement strategy can include:

A good example of the after-care engagement tool is Florence. Florence is a chatbot operating on Facebook, Skype, and Kik. Her main mission is to support individuals by monitoring any chosen mental health & wellness indicator (such as weight loss, pain level, or period cycle) as well as to assist them with adherence, education, and motivation regarding their medication, vitamins or birth control pill regimens.

The first and most important patient engagement strategy is to segment your patients.

You can segment patients based on age, gender, location, medical history, diagnosis, medical insurance, etc. Using segmentation, you can create customized engagement strategies and messages that speak directly to each patient segment.

For example, if you want to send your patients a pamphlet about the importance of mammography to catch cancer in its early stages, it’s better to target it at the women's segment of your patients. 

Or another example, if there is a new study about the importance of a healthy diet for people with diabetes, you’d want to share it with people who actually have it. This way, your message is more meaningful and relevant to the patient and can help improve engagement rates.

Using complex language negatively affects patient engagement because it creates a barrier between the doctor and the patient. Clear communication is vital for patients to be engaged and active in their treatment. Clear language and avoiding vague or overly technical jargon will help your patients digest complex medical information. A study published in Health Literacy Research and Practice found that sometimes patients neither understand medical terminology nor recognize the gaps in their comprehension.

The simple solution is communicating clearly and avoiding jargon and complex medical terms. When explaining medical information, try to be as clear as possible and always ask patients to explain the information back to you.

Our client Natera used a chatbot to provide complex information about genetic test results simply and clearly. The chatbot takes complex medical terms and explains them understandably and humanly. It also offers additional information for patients to learn more and allows patients to ask questions they might have. Read more here: NEVA. Genetic Testing Chatbot for Natera Inc.

Creating meaningful and relevant engagement for even one patient is very time-consuming.

You will eventually need to look at automation options to reach as many patients as possible. Automated patient engagement strategies can be very effective and help you stay connected with your patients at scale. In addition, they hugely benefit your staff by taking routine tasks off their shoulders, resulting in less burnout and staff shortages and eventually in lower operational costs.

Some people are afraid that they might become inhuman when using automated systems. But the key here is balance. You don’t want to replace all of your interactions with automated systems. You just need to apply them where it makes sense.

For example, let’s look at chatbots.

Chatbots are one of the most popular automation tools nowadays, and their possibilities in healthcare are limitless. The most common use cases in using chatbots in healthcare are:

And there is so much more chatbots can do for healthcare. All of the use cases mentioned above help patients be more engaged in their care and help HCP save time and costs.

Using the patient engagement strategy #1 - Segment your patient, segment your patients based on their preferred communication channel. For example, for an elderly segment of your patients, the most comfortable communication channel might be via business phone, and for your younger patient segment, WhatsApp or email might work better. You need to understand where your patients would be most comfortable communicating with you and then provide support and education on these channels.

Using their preferred communication channels you significantly increase the chance of successful interaction and engagement. So, choose the right channel.