5 Steps for Successfully Adopting a Digital Care Program
Digital care is revolutionizing the way outpatient rehab care is delivered, with numerous benefits for clinicians, patients, and organizations. As a result, more organizations are integrating digital care programs into their workflows to supplement in-person care. And increasingly, patients want and expect the convenience and flexibility of digital care: In fact, 80 percent of patients want to interact with their healthcare providers using a smartphone,1 61 percent would consider switching to a provider who offers digital care,2 and 4 in 5 patients want to use digital tools when managing their healthcare experience.3
However, making the transition to digital care doesn’t happen overnight—and clinicians might be resistant to the process. To be successful and gain buy-in, organizations need to have a well-thought-out implementation plan in place. Good preparation can enhance clinician readiness and confidence, ensure smooth integration with existing workflows, and mitigate resistance and maximize adoption rates.
In this article, learn the most important steps for effectively implementing a digital care program.
Implementing a Digital Care Program: A Step-by-Step Roadmap
1. Assess Your Organizational Readiness
Evaluate your current digital capabilities
Assess your organization’s digital care strengths by identifying resources such as staff technological expertise and familiarity with digital care, your technology infrastructure, current technology usage and comfort among staff and patients, and any virtual care services your organization currently offers—whether that’s telehealth, HEP, or even just following up with patients by text between visits.
Assess clinician readiness
Is your staff on board with digital care? Especially if clinicians are already working at their capacity, adding another new process or task—even something that will ultimately save them time—can be met with resistance. To facilitate this process, you can improve buy-in by helping your providers understand how digital care will benefit them—and everyone. Let your clinicians know that digital care will expand their ability to provide great care, not replace them or distance them from their patients.
Identify gaps and areas for improvement
Pinpoint the problems you want to solve with digital care. What are the primary pain points in your organization, and how can a digital care program help? Some common goals for organizations adopting digital care are improving the patient experience, increasing patient retention rates, boosting staff efficiency, enhancing care continuity and access, lowering co-pays and deductibles, and staying competitive as more organizations adopt digital care.
Identify barriers and motivators for change
Determine the most significant technical and cultural barriers, knowledge gaps, and regulatory challenges that your organization faces to adopting a digital care program. From there, decide on your main motivators for change, whether that’s improved patient outcomes, better workflows at the point of care, or satisfying the growing patient demand for a convenient and flexible care experience.
2. Develop a Comprehensive Training Program
Use Digital Health Academy for structured learning
High-quality, structured training is key for successfully implementing a digital care program. Many clinicians have initial concerns and hesitations about digital care, and good training can help them better understand how to incorporate it into practice in a way that fits their clinical style. The MedBridge Digital Health Academy includes all the digital health education and training you need to get your clinicians excited about digital care and help them develop the knowledge and skills to put it into practice.
Include foundational, advanced, and specialized training modules
The Digital Health Academy provides a combination of short-format courses and advanced training modules that can help your clinicians get oriented quickly to the fundamentals of digital care and then upskill as they’re ready.
Provide ongoing reinforcement
If your staff is new to digital care, it will likely take more than just initial training to get them onboard. Change will be most successful if you’re reinforcing those habits over time. Our effective training program includes short, engaging microlearning that can help easily reinforce concepts on a regular basis.
3. Engage Stakeholders Early
Involve clinicians in the planning process
Because clinicians have firsthand knowledge of patient needs, workflows, and process challenges, their insights can help tailor the digital program to better fit clinical practices. In addition, when clinicians are involved from the start, they’re more likely to support and champion the new technology, leading to higher adoption rates among staff.
Address concerns and communicate the benefits
By now you should have a good idea of the main concerns your staff members have about digital care. Ensure that you take the time to practice active listening, address those concerns, and help clinicians understand the goals and benefits of your digital care program.
4. Implement a Pilot Program
Test the waters by starting with a small-scale implementation that you can refine as necessary after identifying any process issues and gathering feedback. An effective pilot program should engage key stakeholders such as clinicians and IT staff, have a defined scope and timeline, and include clinician and patient training. You can use your pilot program to help create clinician champions who can later help with widespread rollout.
5. Measure and Evaluate Success
Set clear metrics and KPIs
Creating clear, data-driven benchmarks is essential for your program’s success. Ensure that your KPIs reflect the overall goals of your program and that they are specific; for example, you might plan to measure benchmarks such as staff training success, the percentage of eligible patients who engage with the digital care program, or patient satisfaction with the program.
Continuously monitor progress and make data-driven improvements
Keep a close eye on how your program is going with tools that help you measure your KPIs. MedBridge offers utilization analytics and cross-track reporting to help you monitor benchmarks such as Home Exercise Program usage and training completion.
How the MedBridge Digital Health Academy Helps
The Digital Health Academy is MedBridge’s comprehensive training library containing hours of material you can easily assign to staff to set them up for success with digital care. Built for staff members looking to take the next step with digital care, our complete training programs give clinicians everything they need to become experts in motivational interviewing, telehealth treatment, and more.
The Digital Health Academy offers:
Foundations in Digital Care
Set new digital care providers up for success with expert-led content.
Tips, Tricks, and Monthly Challenges
Keep digital care top of mind and continuously improve with bite-sized microlearning.
Advanced Training and Certificates
Upskill your staff and provide career growth opportunities with advanced resources.
Learn more about the Digital Health Academy or request a demo.
References
- https://www.fico.com/en/newsroom/fico-global-survey-80-smartphone-users-interested-health-care-alerts
- https://www.experian.com/blogs/healthcare/simplify-care-in-2023-with-a-digital-front-door/
- https://klasresearch.com/report/patient-perspectives-on-patient-engagement-technology-2022-identifying-opportunities-to-align-patient-organization-and-vendor-priorities/1829
