By Catherine Murphy, COO, Zipnosis
Twitter: @Zipnosis
Measuring return on investment – whether that comes from realized cost savings, direct revenue or long-term revenue – is important when building a business case for virtual care. If you want to get into that, we’ve got plenty of material for you (here, here and here).
A lot of time is spent discussing hard numbers with customers, so it’s easy to lose track of the softer side of ROI – what’s known as “blue sky” or “soft” value. While more difficult to measure and quantify, the softer side of ROI is just as important for organizational success. Soft value includes things like market perception, brand reputation, employee engagement and customer (or patient, in this case) satisfaction.
Virtual Care and Soft Value
So, what does that have to do with virtual care? A lot. Virtual care is a key component in strategies that impact those less measurable, but still incredibly important, value drivers, including brand positioning, provider satisfaction, and patient satisfaction and experience.
Brand Position
When I’m speaking with customers, they often tell us that how their brand is perceived in the marketplace is of enormous importance to them. A well-publicized virtual care offering can help healthcare organizations position themselves as patient-friendly, convenience-focused, and technologically savvy. With a recent survey of patients finding that more than half of millennials would choose a provider who offers virtual care over one who does not, the brand impact of a virtual care solution can be the difference between patient acquisition and patient attrition.
Provider Satisfaction
In a world where provider burnout is front and center, finding ways to maximize provider satisfaction is critical. Providers remain skeptical about virtual care and adoption is slow—just 18% of physicians are interested in adding virtual visits to their practice, according to a recent Deloitte survey. However, patients are increasingly interested in virtual visits, with 57% indicating interest in online doctor visits, according to the same survey. Finding virtual tools to facilitate patient care that don’t add to providers’ workloads is critical. Virtual care, specifically store-and-forward or asynchronous modes of care, can lighten providers’ workloads while still enabling them to care for more patients. At Zipnosis, we’ve seen customers with provider satisfaction rates as high as 100% (top 3 box on a scale of 1-10).
Patient Satisfaction and Experience
Spoiler Alert: In our soon-to-be-released On-Demand Virtual Care Survey Report, our team found that patient satisfaction was the most selected success metric across all respondents. Moreover, looking at the virtual care program goals, patient experience and satisfaction were the most selected reasons for launching a virtual care service. By launching virtual care health systems are demonstrating commitment to making healthcare work for their patients, instead of making patients work to get healthcare. This is vital in enhancing patients’ experience with the health system and their overall satisfaction.
Maximizing Value from Virtual Care
One of the things we tell customers is that their virtual care service is only as good as the marketing behind it. Realizing the benefits of soft value – as with hard ROI – means spreading the word about virtual care, with the greatest success coming to health systems that combine seasonal marketing campaigns with providers recommending the service to their patients in-clinic.
After all, it’s impossible for patients to experience the convenience and satisfaction of a virtual encounter if they don’t know it’s available. Your health system’s brand won’t be known as an innovative leader in care delivery if the marketplace isn’t aware of the innovative services on offer. And, your physicians, NPs and PAs won’t find satisfaction with a platform that their patients aren’t using.
Soft value is a real, if less tangible, benefit of launching virtual care. Health systems that want to build their brand, enhance patient experience, and support provide satisfaction would be wise to consider adding virtual care or leveraging their existing service to meet their goals.
This article was originally published on Zipnosis and is republished here with permission.