Digital Patient Pathways
[2024 Guide]
Your guide to how hospitals and clinics are converting their existing protocols and models of care into flexible, personalised digital patient pathways to meet the rising demand for healthcare services.
Digital Patient Pathways offer more than just online forms and reminders
Digital patient pathways are a daily mobile checklist of things patients need to do and know, as well as forms and assessments they need to complete as part of their episode of care.
These steps in the pathway are traditionally paper forms and phone calls but with digitisation, may now take the form of virtual questionnaires, videos, digital posters, wearable data collection, and even extend to multimedia educational content that patients can reference.
Given the adoption of digital technologies to assist almost any task or process, some of the benefits that patient-centric care pathways provide are listed below.
Increased Efficiency
In today’s world, clinical pathways enabled by digital technology are doing more than just improving healthcare efficiency and reducing waiting times for patients; they are revolutionising healthcare delivery entirely.
By streamlining clinical processes through the use of digital care pathways, healthcare providers are able to cater to the needs of their patients.
These clinical pathways can also provide resources for patient education and health information, which helps them make more informed decisions about their care and makes the process faster.
Ultimately, digitised clinical pathways are proving to be an invaluable tool in driving the overall quality of healthcare forward.
Improved Coordination of Care Delivery
Digital care pathways are truly changing the way healthcare is delivered without impacting the relationship between care givers and their patients.
They provide a platform for clinicians to efficiently coordinate and collaborate between different care settings and disciplines throughout the patient’s journey, streamlining transitions between providers. Not only does this lead to better health outcomes, but these platforms also expedite clinical processes and provide resources to ensure that patients are properly educated every step of the way.
In short, digital care pathways bridge gaps in care provision and optimise clinical flow in order to foster improved patient-centered outcomes and enable clinicians to work at the top of their field.
Lower Costs of Healthcare Delivery
With digital care pathways, paperwork and administrative workflow delays can be automated and streamlined into convenient clinical workflows. This helps reduce the cost of providing healthcare services, leading to better patient care and overall higher quality of service.
Greater Patient Engagement and Adherence
Digital patient pathways enable healthcare providers to track adherence levels of treatments or medications, as well as engage with patients on an ongoing basis through reminders or messages sent directly on the platform itself.
This encourages greater patient engagement which can lead to improved outcomes such as higher medication compliance rates among chronic illness sufferers or increased attendance at regular follow-ups or appointments where necessary and in general, even better health outcomes.
Enhanced Data Collection, Analysis and Predictions
Digital patient pathways capture real-time data that provides valuable insights into how well a provider is delivering its services which can be highly useful for both healthcare teams and patients.
But most importantly, digital care pathways have the capability to provide comprehensive insights into patient pathways and their associated risk factors. By leveraging patient reported outcomes (PROMs) data, healthcare facilities can drive better decision-making processes for improved patient care.
Plus, you can easily identify and address common risk factors post-discharge and monitor them over time, to improve discharge processes and lower re-admission rates.
Needless to say, a digital care pathway definitely contributes a positive impact when it comes to not only the healthcare journeys of individuals but also healthcare teams in terms of efficient and effective care delivery.
A Practical Guide to Digital Patient Pathways
In this section, we’ll go through what digital care pathways can provide, as well as a general overview of how a digital patient pathway actually works.
What Digital Patient Pathways are in a nutshell
In summary, a digital patient pathway is a digitised system for healthcare providers and the patient to manage the entire episode of care. It streamlines communication between healthcare providers, reduces paperwork and repetitive phone calls, and automates administrative workflows to ensure a smoother experience for both patients and providers.
It is typically used to coordinate patient care across different settings, disciplines or teams and allow real-time data capture for better tracking of outcomes over time. Digital patient pathways can also provide a platform for collaborative working, patient education and encourage patient engagement to improve adherence rates and ultimately help deliver better outcomes.
Digital patient pathways are generally made up of several ‘steps’ that are taken by the patient as they progress through their episode of care. These steps can be tailored to individuals depending on their health risks and the nature of their health issue, such as a chronic condition or an acute illness. The steps may include health history screening, vaccinations, medications, self care advice, lifestyle recommendations and so on – all designed to help the patient get better and stay healthy.
Scaling a simple patient experience that doesn’t overwhelm frontline staff
Going digital can be daunting for both the patient and most especially healthcare teams. But that doesn’t have to be the case with Personify Care. Our platform is designed to be easily navigated and managed, so frontline staff can spend less time managing technology and more time delivering care.
We understand the need for a simple patient experience that doesn’t overwhelm healthcare teams. That’s why our flexible digital solutions are designed to help scale virtual care delivery in a way that makes sense for your staff.
A Perspective into digital patient pathways within a patient’s episode of care
A digital patient pathway within a patient’s episode of care could look something like this:
The digital care pathways can start at any stage of the patient journey. Some of the most common experiences are when a patient is first referred to a health service, antenatal care team or is being admitted to hospital. While waiting for the consultation to take place, patients are automatically assigned to the pathway that’s relevant to their procedure or hospital. Patients receive a daily mobile checklist of things they need to do, things they need to know, and forms and assessments they need to complete each day – prior to their admission or once they’ve been discharged. No need for special hardware or changes to a team’s existing clinical workflows.
Ultimately, this digital patient pathway provides patients with up-to-date information about their condition, preparation and care resources and informed consent that can help them make clear decisions about their healthcare.
Designed to be patient-centric, digital patient pathways also help keep health teams in control
Digital care pathways are designed to be more than just patient-centric. They provide a platform where healthcare teams can stay in control of the healthcare system, enabling them to make the best decisions for their patients. These pathways enable health care providers to prioritise tasks, coordinate care between team members, receive information quickly and accurately, and keep track of progress and outcomes.
Additionally, digital care pathways are designed to quickly and accurately provide patient reported experience measures via capturing the patient’s experience with the healthcare system through surveys or feedback forms (PREM), allowing health teams to identify areas of improvement and address them in a timely manner. With this, healthcare teams can ensure that they are providing quality care while also providing patients with a more personalised experience.
The benefit of clinicians answering one simple question for patients remotely
For clinicians to support patients and improve outcomes when it comes to the patient’s health, remote access to healthcare services is a must. By being able to answer simple questions online, clinicians can provide quick and efficient help to patients who may be in need of a clinical assessment, treatment, or followup. Remote access also allows clinicians to assess and triage conditions without having the patient come into their clinic or hospital setting, saving time and money for both.
Why digital patient pathways can be used alongside patient portals and other tools
Digital patient pathways can be used alongside patient portals and other tools to provide a comprehensive digital experience. Such tools can include specific healthcare applications, patient engagement features, patient education resources, and more.
However, it would be even better if there was one digital platform that had everything in it; this way, patients and health care providers could access all the necessary resources in one place. This would help streamline the patient experience and ensure that healthcare teams are better able to coordinate care and track outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I see real-time patient feedback on digital patient pathways?
Yes, digital patient pathways offer the ability to view real-time feedback from patients so that health teams can quickly identify and take action accordingly. This helps improve communication between healthcare teams and patients for better outcomes.
Do digital care pathways include electronic medical records?
Yes, digital care pathways can seamlessly share information with your preferred electronic medical records and that’s why they are so convenient. Electronic medical records are a great way to store and manage patient data in one centralised location.
Not only does it save time for medical staff in terms of accessing and updating information, but it also offers more accurate tracking of a patient’s health data over time. In addition, electronic medical records help further reduce costs associated with administrative workflows that involve paperwork and paper-based processes.
What can Personify Care provide?
Personify Care provides solutions to help healthcare organisations ensure patients arrive prepared for their episode of care, improve their patient experience, enhance administrative workflows, and provide shared decision-making opportunities. We provide digitised high value care pathways that have been proven to generate improved outcomes – for patients and health services.
With years of clinical experience supported by our novel technology, we constantly strive to ensure that our services enhance the patient experience and enable clinicians to provide the best care possible.
We also have the ability to deeply understand a patient’s needs by leveraging data from their health records in order for clinicians to make real-time decisions to create personalised plans of care.
Do you cater to private hospitals and other health service providers?
The digital services of our patient pathways system are for hospitals, clinics and clinical research institutions.
Yes, we do cater to private hospitals and other health service providers. Our digital services of our patient pathways system is fully customisable and designed to enhance the patient experience and enhance workforce efficiency.
Can Personify Care support the entire care journey?
Yes, our fully configurable platform can support multiple episodes of care across units, sites and throughout the patient journey – from outpatients, admission, to post-discharge.
We understand that patient-care is often multi-disciplinary with patients requiring interactions with different specialities across their episode of care, all with their own protocol requirements, forms, follow ups and more.
Can we have clinical screening questions and custom workflows to the pathways?
Yes, with our platform you can automatically screen your patients’ health history and flag clinical risks like Blood Pressure, Blood Thinners, VTE, BMI, Allergies, COVID19, and more. This helps eliminate the burden of manually reviewing and chasing paper forms so you can spend more time on high value care, with the high-risk patients.
Do your care pathways support clinical workflows for culturally and linguistically diverse communities?
Yes, to provide the best care to our community its essential we support health services to provide digital care pathways to all their patients.
Personify Care delivers culturally and linguistically appropriate digital pathways that require no apps or special hardware. Consumers simply select their preferred language on registration.
Is Personify Care easy to use for older patients or those that need support?
Great question and one we get asked a lot! We’ve analysed our results and found digital care pathway adoption to be consistent across all patient cohorts – from 18-95 year olds! And this isn’t by chance, we’ve built into our product features to enhance the experience for visually impaired, proxy logins for children or those who need additional support.
Digital care pathways have significant impact on time and resources, but they are not a silver bullet. On average, more than 95% of patients respond to Personify Care pathways – saving health service staff critical time to invest in the other 5% of patients via more traditional methods – like phone calls.
How do you get such a high patient response rate to digital patient pathways?
Personify Care’s novel technology, uses patient interaction data (e.g. time of responses, pathway attributes and UI interactions) across all pathways to continuously and dynamically optimise delivery of high patient response rates across all patient groups.
The more patients that use the platform across a growing set of pathways, the better the system gets at delivering a high patient response rate for more complex pathways across hard to reach populations.
In the past 12 months alone, the Personify Care platform has delivered a 91% patient response rate across more than 8.8 million patient interactions from diverse patient populations in public and private healthcare settings across Australia and internationally.
Learn how leading health services converted their clinical protocols
