Transforming The Patient Journey: From Reactive to Proactive Healthcare

Anyone who has experienced a complex or chronic health issue knows firsthand that the patient care journey can be a frustrating and fragmented one:

• Missing calls from doctors because they're using random 10-digit numbers when calling you with your results. 
• Losing track of scheduling your next doctor’s visit; then facing a fully-booked calendar when you’re at your sickest and need an appointment the most.
• Being batted around to different specialists and repeating your history each time, afraid they’ll miss some vital piece of information.

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In the last several years, the healthcare industry has been undergoing a transformation from this fragmented, reactive care model to a data-driven proactive care model that promises to lower overall system healthcare costs and improve patient experience and outcomes.

Proactive Care vs. Reactive Care

A reactive care model is what we’ve traditionally practiced – wait until you’re really sick to see the doctor, then “out of sight, out of mind” until the next doctor’s visit. Reactive health accounts for more than 75% of healthcare spending in the U.S., mainly driven by chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes which are responsible for 7 of every 10 deaths in the U.S. and yet are either largely preventable or fairly easily managed if patients and providers work closely to practice proactive and preventive care. 

Proactive care, by contrast, empowers providers and patients to take an active role in managing the patient’s health – incorporating lifestyle changes, data collection and more frequent touchpoints – to keep the patient healthy. Effectively, it increases the “surface area” of care for a patient in between doctor’s visits. This additional surface area can enable healthcare providers to identify issues earlier on and establish thorough care plans that can delay, prevent or reduce the severity of potential diseases.

At the core of the transformation from reactive to proactive care are the rise of two technologies:

1. Remote patient monitoring. The use of mobile phones, wearables and other iOT devices to collect real-time patient vitals and data (“Systems of Data Collection”) which is then streamed to centralized, cloud-based systems your providers can access (“Systems of Record”). Examples of remote patient monitoring devices include: 
   • Digital glucose, heart and blood pressure monitors that record your vitals
   • Smart scales that record your weight and smartwatches that record your exercise and sleep patterns
   • Mobile apps that prompt you to input more qualitative data like your mood, pain level or last menstrual cycle.
2. Telemedicine. The delivery of patient care by a physician or other clinician virtually over HIPAA-compliant phone, video, SMS or chat rather than in-person ("Systems of Care Delivery"). Today, many health issues can be fully evaluated, and even prescribed medicine for, just by uploading a photo and having a brief text exchange or quick call with a nurse practitioner. And for chronic illnesses, voice- or video-based check ins with your doctor can happen more frequently and replace lengthier, and more time consuming in-person visits.

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The challenge this new model poses is what to do with all that patient data? How to decision quickly and take the best action. More specifically, in order to close the gap between access to data and access to care, it requires a system that can be used to determine:

• Which patients to reach out to? 
• When exactly or under what circumstance does it make sense to reach out?
• What channel should be used? Calls, texts, email?
• How to get the patient to engage? 
• What next step should the patient take? Should they do nothing? Schedule a video appointment? Go straight to the emergency room? 

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Doctor’s offices were used to you inbounding to them whenever you had an issue, not the other way around, so their existing phone systems or contact center software are not equipped for proactive outbound engagement at scale.

Intelligent Systems of Engagement – How Regal Solves The Missing Piece

The missing piece in the transformation from Reactive to Proactive Care are Intelligent “Systems of Engagement” that can turn real-time patient data at scale into real-time provider actions tailored to each patient’s unique situation.

Here’s how Regal solves this gap: 

1. Regal streams in patient behavior data and health data in real-time and creates Unified Profiles for every patient. 
2. The Regal Journey Builder orchestrates which patients to action on and when, based on triggers such as an at-home monitor producing a reading registering above or below certain acceptable thresholds. 
3. The action required might be an automated SMS check-in or a provider reaching out directly on SMS or phone for an immediate conversation, or can include a provider changing a medication, updating a care plan, ordering a new test, consulting with another clinical team member or scheduling a future appointment.
4. Regal's Task Manager routs the highest priority task to the right provider.
5. In their Regal Desktop, providers can accept call tasks to start dialing or complete their other tasks, and can access relevant patient data or context necessary to have an informed conversation, including the patient's historical conversation history. 
6. All activities in Regal are monitored and reported on in order to track adherence and understand what’s working and what’s not. A/B testing can be used to constantly iterate toward the optimal outcomes. And with REGAL AI, what’s mentioned in a call can be used to automatically trigger relevant follow ups.

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‍Real Customer Outcomes

Here are 3 examples of how innovative healthcare companies use Regal to drive proactive patient outreach, high patient engagement and better patient outcomes:

Cadence Health is a leading B2B2C remote patient monitoring service that delivers effective chronic disease management for patients with Hypertension, Heart Failure or Type 2 Diabetes. Using smart, at home devices, 84% of patients take their vitals with Cadence 16+ days per month, leading to a 3.2x increase in patient adherence to guideline directed therapies.

• Before Regal: Cadence’s ticketing-based system lacked omni-channel orchestration or A/B testing capabilities and led to just a 70% task completion rate and 15-20% first call patient answer rate. 
• After Regal: Cadence uses Regal’s Journey Builder to personalize outreach to patients across calls and texts based on smart device readings, and to A/B test different outreach strategies. They also rely on Regal’s Task Manager and Reporting to ensure providers don’t lose track of tasks. Providers are now completing 91% of tasks and Cadence’s first call answer rate has doubled to 36%. Higher provider efficiency and greater patient engagement leads to both better patient outcomes and increased ROI for Cadence.

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Perry Health is a remote clinic operating across the US that provides data-based personalized care through remote monitoring, nutritional counseling, and support to diabetes patients on Medicare. Patients are provided a connected glucose meter and testing supplies to monitor their glucose levels from home.

• Before Regal: Perry Health initially built an internal custom app to maintain a checklist for each patient, and used Dialpad to manually place calls and texts to patients. This led to tasks getting missed, inefficient manual processes and sub-optimal prioritization of which patients to reach out to when. 

• After Regal: Perry Health uses Regal throughout the patient journey to provide proactive end to end care that wows their patients.
  • Onboarding: When new patients first receive their glucose meter, an onboarding call is immediately triggered from the Member Experience team to ensure the patient correctly sets up their device. Completion rate of these calls has increased to 90%. 
  • Accountability Coaching: Wellness Coaches use Regal to reach out to patients proactively over calls and texts to check in and provide individualized care and support. This helps Perry Health increase patient adherence to their care plans.
  • Clinical Team: Registered nurses and dietitians use Regal to proactively schedule calls with patients to discuss their diet plans. Appointment reminders and nurture campaigns in Regal have helped increase the appointment show rate from 65% to 83%. 
  • Remote Patient Monitoring: If a patient’s glucose meter registers a high or low glucose level, the Perry health team uses Regal’s Journey Builder to trigger an immediate call to the patient.

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Podimetrics is a virtual care management and technology company that helps prevent diabetic foot complications and amputations using their SmartMat and customizable human-to-human support. By stepping on the Podimetrics SmartMat for just 20 seconds each day, a patient’s food temperatures are monitored over time and alerts are triggered at early signs of inflammation, allowing providers to proactively help reduce inflammation before complications start.

• Before Regal: Podimetrics struggled to get high answer rates on their outbound calls. They often showed up as Spam or a random 10-digit number (even though they were critical to the patients health), so patients ignored them. 
• After Regal: Podimetrics' answer rates on outbound calls increased by a double digit percentage, allowing them to reach more customers with a single outreach. 

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Learn about Regal’s products and services, read our blog posts, or email us. We are happy to discuss how our platform’s solutions can transform your patient experience and business outcomes.