Now more than ever, we welcome the highly-anticipated changes coming in 2021 as the COVID-19 vaccine becomes a tangible solution to quell the pandemic.
The mayhem and prevailing air of uncertainty throughout the past year has triggered many changes in the way we work, travel, communicate, and especially in how we deliver and receive healthcare. As healthcare organizations became increasingly overwhelmed, patients’ concerns and need for support also grew, creating the daunting task of maintaining high-quality patient care and engagement across the board.
In response, many healthcare organizations have welcomed innovation and rapid adoption of technology to offer more support to providers and patients.
Amidst the pandemic, Orbita met healthcare organizations with an expanded digital front door solution that streamlines conventional patient experiences as well as specific COVID-19 resources and navigation. With automated, omni-channel patient outreach, patients are more consistently engaged in their healthcare, even during these times of isolation and disconnection. 24/7 access to question answering services and other resources fuses the care journey to offer continuous support, not just at typical disparate touchpoints. Through chat and voice solutions powered by conversational AI, healthcare organizations are able to offload administrative responsibilities and engage a higher volume of patients in a more direct and meaningful way.
With the impending delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, a whole new set of challenges will arise for healthcare organizations. Healthcare organizations must proactively respond to patient demands and already-increasing volume of vaccine questions. Among the challenges will be combatting patient apprehension and misinformation, screening patients for vaccine eligibility, scheduling vaccinations, and post-vaccination monitoring programs.
Healthcare organizations can proactively streamline these processes by expanding their digital front door initiatives with a niche program dedicated to COVID-19 vaccine information and patient support.
COVID-19 Vaccine Access Clinical Program, powered by Orbita
Educate Patients
People fear what they don’t understand, and a lack of knowledge or access to it significantly hinders the patient care journey. Right now, only 60% of people in the U.S. said they would take the COVID-19 vaccine. Curating a vetted, up-to-date knowledge base of vaccine information and FAQs, delivered through the digital front door solution can reduce apprehension and alleviate call center burden from high call volume. With natural language processing, this question-answering functionality ensures that a diverse population of patients receive high-quality, personalized support.
Streamline Call Center Operations
To further alleviate call center burdens, Orbita offers call center automation and deflection capabilities, along with robust business rules to support call center escalation. With an IVR system powered by conversational AI technology, healthcare organizations can create efficiencies and automate conversations without the need for a live person on the phone. This supports call center deflection by providing consumers and patients with self-service tools to quickly find answers to common front-line questions. While independently answering a large portion of queries, this technology is intelligent enough to escalate specific interactions to a live agent as needed. This helps call centers prioritize how their live agents allocate their time by answering calls to the most urgent situations or unique patient needs.
Engage Patients via Proactive Conversational Campaigns
Sometimes, successful engagement of patients in their care journeys requires an intentional nudge! By tapping into the idea of 'nudge theory,' healthcare organizations can create outbound conversational campaigns to improve patient engagement by enabling patients to take next steps directly in the message such as scheduling an appointment, while eliminating administrative overhead. These outgoing messages are powered by conversational AI and can be personalized based on patient context, profiles, and preferences - and delivered via SMS, phone, email, and smart speaker. Multiple channels can be used as needed to escalate messages which, in turn, increases patient engagement and conversion. Once patients have the right information and an easy way to communicate, proactive messaging and calls-to-action can guide them to appropriate resources for vaccine scheduling, appointment reminders, follow-ups for a second dose, and post-vaccination monitoring programs.
Eligibility Screenings
As vaccine administration programs begin rolling out, there will be certain criteria to determine eligibility. Incorporating a vaccine eligibility screening tool into these programs helps patients access reliable organization-specific information on when and where they can receive a COVID-19 vaccine. With this eligibility screening tool, organizations can deploy automated conversational campaigns to motivate patients to stay engaged with information about vaccine availability and scheduling through calls-to action and other personalized nudges. Once a patient goes through the vaccine eligibility screening, the chatbot will guide them to find a location and schedule an appointment for receiving the vaccine, or if not currently eligible, add them to a list to receive automated vaccine updates.
Finding the Nearest Location and Scheduling
Orbita has capitalized on geographical search capabilities to filter and sort facilities based on the patient’s location, which can be collected using location services or the specified zip code - providing a robust location directory. This provides the patient with interactive location visuals with easy access to scheduling and information. Once an appointment time and provider are selected, the patient will be guided through a streamlined scheduling process.
Voice Search Engine Optimization
Voice search is on the rise, supported by advances in natural language processing. Some quick stats on the use of how consumers and patients search for healthcare:
- 72.9% of voice assistant use cases involve symptom-checking
- 45.9% of patients use voice assistants to ask about medical information
37.7% of patients use voice assistants to find the location of a health-related service provider
Orbita helps healthcare organizations optimize their online presence by automating the engagement and answering of these types of natural-language searches coming from patients on their preferred devices.
Guide your consumers and patients through the COVID-19 pandemic and into a post-pandemic world with the support of Orbita's conversational AI platform and related solutions. Create meaningful efficiencies and improve patient experience by automating patient outreach and delivering education and resources directly into your patients' hands across the channels that they know and trust.