Modulating the bedside manner since Covid-19

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, just two years ago, there was a general belief that patients always needed to see their healthcare professional face-to-face. This view persisted despite easy, user-friendly video communication via the Internet. This revolution in communication technology offered healthcare professionals and patients a viable alternative.

Physicians are generally cautious adopters of new approaches. Under normal conditions, you would expect healthcare communication to evolve over time. But along came Covid-19 and suddenly telehealth was on everyone’s lips.

It didn’t take long before the necessity of telehealth during the pandemic quickly became a virtue. In fact, it became a brand virtue for healthcare providers.

Brands in the healthcare sector should consider placing telehealth at the centre of their marketing strategy as the pandemic carries on. www.gartner.com – Daily Insights

Patients in the US were quick to respond:

The first quarter of 2020 saw the number of telehealth visits increase by 50% compared with the same period in 2019¹
The sector witnessed an overall increase of 33% for telehealth visits in 2020 compared to the previous year¹

Some marketing experts describe hybrid as the new normal. The delivery of healthcare has evolved as telehealth use has skyrocketed and begun to replace traditional in-person consultations/care.

As this evolves and to remain competitive, healthcare providers must find a way to deliver a consistent and high-quality experience for patients who are looking for an alternative to in-person care.

This begs a key question of healthcare providers

How are you optimising the patient experience of virtual care to match consumer expectations?

In formulating an answer to this question, it is useful to consider a patient satisfaction survey conducted by Gartner², which looked at the experience of telehealth from the perspective of new patients.

8% – Very unsatisfied
19% – Unsatisfied
42% – Generally satisfied
32% – Very satisfied

This again underlines the fact that patients are enthusiastic adopters. However, as this matures in the next few years, we are likely to see competition for retention of patients by healthcare providers. As described by the survey – very unsatisfied, unsatisfied and generally satisfied means we can all do better! In other words, providers that don’t make the grade in terms of the delivery of telehealth services will lose patients to those that do make the grade.

How can providers make the grade?

One way, which marketers are very enthusiastic about, is to promote the new services effectively in the digital arena by becoming a knowledge centre. A provider of knowledge to enhance long-term wellbeing, rather than just a provider of remedies for immediate ills. This is an interesting idea, but it’s beyond the scope of this blog.

Another way, is to enhance the actual patient communication experience at the touchpoints with the humans who are involved in providing the telehealth services:

Administrators
Counsellors
Healthcare professionals (doctors, pharmacists, nurses and affiliated professionals)

Let’s return to that survey

In my view the methodological problem with it, is that it asked patients to rate their satisfaction versus face-to-face meetings. The flaws here are twofold:

It didn’t ask patients to rate their satisfaction versus another competitor provider.
It didn’t ask patients to rate their satisfaction versus providers of other, non-healthcare, services in the tele arena.

This second point is salient. We can see that patient expectations of their telehealth provider will be driven not only by comparisons with face to face but by their overall experiences in the virtual online world.

I have no doubt that the newly emerging telehealth providers of today, blinking in the harsh sunlight of the COVID-19 world will be found wanting now.

Why?

Because the humans involved in telehealth communications have little-to-no training in how to enhance virtual/tele customer interactions. This would be an advantage for patient retention. But there aren’t any standard benchmarks to set themselves by so the quality of the patient interaction can be judged. At present they are doomed to just muddle along.

This might be fine in a national health service where there is, in effect, only one provider. But it makes no sense in a competitive environment where patients can choose their healthcare provider. Patients will quickly gravitate to the providers that provide them with the best experience in the diagnosis and treatment of their condition, that reassure them and make them feel good about themselves. It’s only human nature.

Bedside manner in the telehealth era

Let’s briefly look at just one important aspect of the patient experience: the bedside manner of the physician/nurse.

Despite most healthcare providers paying lip service to the importance of this aspect, there is very little training to be had in it anywhere in the world. I’ve yet to hear of any healthcare professional being graded, performance-wise in terms of its application.

So, what might we look at in terms of enhancing the patient experience in the telehealth setting about bedside manner?

Modulating the bedside manner

Patient focus: simple video-presenter techniques to ensure that the patient knows they are always at the forefront of the healthcare professional’s mind during the consultation.
Avoiding hostility: patient hostility, when it presents, is generally a function of fear that the patient is experiencing. So, utilisation of techniques used by emergency call-handlers could be useful here.
Listening: it’s easy to talk in video presentations. But how easy is it to listen in video presentations? And how do healthcare professionals convey to a patient in a telehealth situation, instantly and consistently that they are listening to them
Empathy: professionals might empathise with patients in face-to-face consultations, typically nurses are very good at this. But how is it achieved over the Internet in a video call? How do you show, as well as tell a patient that you care about them and their condition, without appearing insincere? And how do you validate their concerns appropriately while remaining on track with diagnostic/treatment paths?
Observation: healthcare professionals, particularly experienced ones, pick up all sorts of nuances from observations in face-to-face consultations. Techniques should be utilised to ensure the same observation platform is achieved in a telehealth situation.
Asking questions: it’s easy to turn a telehealth consultation into a police interview, just read the questions as though from a list. The problem is that it dehumanises the patient and they won’t enjoy the experience. Professional counsellors have many techniques to offer that get the answers while putting the patient at ease and making the experience comfortable.
Body language: ever notice that some people appear wooden, stressed and hesitant when imparting information on video, while others are relaxed, confident and authoritative? The polished ones have had some training. Poise, facial expression and vocal tone can all be easily learned and applied to make the patient feel they have made the right choice in their telehealth professional.

Like I mentioned, it’s likely that future telehealth patients will be benchmarking their health provider against other virtual service providers from all industries and walks of life, not just healthcare. And it’s likely that those healthcare providers at the top of their game will sit up and notice that before their competitors do. I anticipate that customer communication training and everything that goes with it: benchmarking and analytics will be as much a feature of future telehealth as it is now for call centre marketing.

Neil Madden, Editor, The Fertility Hub

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