When it comes to someone’s health, everyone is seeking—and deserves—individualized care. While this is the goal for many healthcare providers, continued staffing issues and recent changes to the landscape have made this even more challenging.

Technology such as patient texting helps care teams check in on patients digitally, allows physicians to personally focus on the sickest patients, and centralizes communication between both parties.

Physician-centered to care teams

Historically, healthcare visits have revolved around physician-centered care, regardless of the need/complexity of the patient. As we’ve transitioned to value-based care and focused more on preventative care, we’ve had to shift focus to the care team because physicians need to be focusing their time on the patients with the greatest needs/complexity.

Instead of one person, primarily the physician, interfacing with the patient, we now have 3-5 care team members interacting with patients at any given time. In this reality, unified communication becomes essential to providing the best care for each patient.

With patient texting, care teams can communicate digitally with patients to determine if and when a visit is needed, and who needs a visit from the physician—leaving much more time for physicians to focus on the 5 or so percent of patients that are the sickest. 

This allows patients to interact with more members of the care team, and oftentimes get quicker information about their condition. Depending on the situation, patients can stay at home and text one number that reaches a whole care team, and multiple professionals can weigh in.

Centralized communication 

With many current texting solutions in healthcare, patients receive texts from multiple different numbers, making it confusing for patients to know who they are talking to and who to reach out to for additional information, questions, or scheduling. 

This can lead to frustration on the patient’s end, making them not want to utilize patient texting and just visit the office in person or call, further leading to more build-up at the clinic. Talk about going backward.

With just one number, a centralized digital messaging system allows multiple care team members to communicate with patients clearly and effectively. Patients can save the number, maybe name it after the clinic, and only have one contact for their primary healthcare needs.

On the other end, care teams can organize all conversations in one place, transfer text conversations to the appropriate care team members, and keep archives for each patient to reference each time they communicate with the clinic. Having information on past visits and conditions helps providers make patients feel special and cared for.

One number for all 

When it comes to patient texting, use a system that centralizes communication under one number. This isn’t just easier for patients, but also for care teams. With all patient information in one system, teams can communicate with patients on an individual and personalized level, ensuring they feel taken care of. 

Central communication is just one perk of patient texting through top digital messaging platforms. Learn more about patient messaging or schedule a conversation with the Kipsu team today.