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Streamlining intake: Creating more time for patients and providers

Streamlining intake: Creating more time for patients and providers

The intake process is evolving. Collecting relevant patient information before the appointment gives doctors more time to spend with patients—and allows patients to be more active in their care.

At Phreesia, our mission is to make care easier every day. We do this through automated tools for intake, payments, access and more, and we’re constantly looking for ways to evolve. This year, we’re helping our providers improve their intake process from an end-user perspective. Instead of long, cumbersome questionnaires that patients quit before they even start, we’re breaking the process into shorter workflows and more relevant questionnaires. Delivered in the right sequence leading into appointments, this ensures patients complete the process and make it to your educational content at the end when they are ready to learn. Read on to learn about the trends and projections related to the evolving intake process.  

The burden on healthcare providers and their staff has increased significantly in recent years, driven by a combination of administrative, clinical and regulatory requirements that strain their time, energy and capacity to deliver high-quality patient care. For example, one study estimated that primary care physicians would require 27 hours per day for preventive care, chronic disease care, acute care, and documentation and inbox management (or any of the work the office staff does). That doesn’t include addressing health-related social needs and social determinants of health or holistic care that may impact the patient, like mental and emotional health. 

Streamlining processes is crucial to alleviating the burden on healthcare providers. One way to do this is through digital patient intake. Digital patient intake refers to the process that healthcare providers use to gather information from new and returning patients before their visit and share information that pertains to their upcoming appointment. With such limited time, it’s helpful for doctors and patients to have all the necessary information at hand before appointments.  

The problem? Trying to put everything necessary in one long questionnaire can become cumbersome and negatively impact patient engagement and completion.   

An evolution, not a revolution 

When Phreesia was founded 20 years ago, the patient intake process was still largely done with pen and paper while the patient sat in the waiting room, and we are proud of the massive improvements our digital intake tools have offered providers and patients alike. We work day in and day out to help providers refine these workflows, removing unnecessary questions, not repeating questions in unnecessary places, and writing question-and-answer options in ways backed by research and best practices.  

Looking at the data on our platform and in the broader digital ecosystem, it’s clear that stronger engagement comes from workflows that are fast, easier to understand, and cover things that patients feel are relevant to them. Sometimes that means removing questions, rephrasing questions, using a different answer interface or posing information at different times right before appointments. Consider our recommended question format for race, ethnicity and language data: By providing a drop-down menu that includes over 900 potential answers (informed by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention) and shortening the list of potential answers as a patient begins to type, providers can make intake more inclusive, accurate and quick to complete.  

Streamlined intake ensures patients complete the process  

So, why should sponsors of PatientConnect campaigns care about how the patient intake is evolving? Digital intake only works when used properly, and if patients have slogged through a challenging, long intake, they have less cognitive capacity to absorb the educational content delivered at the end. Breaking up intake into impactful pieces, redesigning how traditional questions are asked, and getting even more granular about the moments just before an appointment helps everything get done digitally ahead of appointments.  

“Phreesia’s mission is to make care easier every day. Figuring out how to collect and deliver all the most important, relevant information before an appointment in an ‘easy’ way for the end user is actually not easy at all,” says Alex Beneville, VP of Marketing and Content, Phreesia Life Sciences. “The less cognitive fatigue a patient experiences during intake, the more likely they are to complete everything and the more engaging and effective the information they get just before an appointment can be.” 

Personalized preparation during the pre-appointment intake process connects patients with the information they need before they see their doctor. It also gives doctors more time during the visit to focus on impactful conversations with patients, which then generate meaningful behavioral change. Talk about a win-win-win.  

Learn how Phreesia can help you reach patients with relevant health information to engage them at critical moments in their healthcare journey and empower them to play a more involved role in their health.