From best patient to no-show: An onboarding story.

My first mistaken assumption

As poor as I felt the next morning and certainly contagious, I made the decision to reach out to a nearby urgent care clinic and schedule a virtual visit. A perfect use case, right?

Though I’d never been a patient at the clinic I had in mind, I was a 25-year patron of its parent healthcare organization. Given that, I assumed that they’d have easy access to my account details, payment methods, and personal health history.  

Wrong.  

Using my smartphone, I found the clinic website and appointment-setter tool. Great! They had openings that morning. I selected a time, got an appointment confirmation, and was then directed to—wait, what’s this? Forms?

My first notion was to look for a box I could check that said, essentially, “You have all this info in your system, look it up yourself.”

There was no such option.

With no way to avoid the task, I spent what felt like an hour (when you’re sick, 20 minutes feels like an hour) looking up and entering details you might expect to provide if you were a first-time patient. Annoying. And I regretted that I hadn’t taken up this effort on my laptop. This was not a mobile-friendly experience.

My second mistaken assumption  

Arduous and frustrating as those minutes were, it was easy enough for me to let it go for the sake of a few winks before the virtual visit, which, I assumed, would be a breeze with the “paperwork” behind me.

Wrong again.

Not wanting to be the one showing up late to the visit, I clicked the invitation link a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. I couldn’t help but notice that the meeting invite came from a third-party video vendor, not the urgent care client. Not so uncommon, I thought.  

I was, however, dumbfounded by what happened next. Instead of being ushered into a virtual waiting room, I was forwarded instead to—heavy sigh—more forms. Even worse, it appeared as though I would need to complete virtually the same set of questions and requests that I had just labored through an hour before. Again, there was no work around. Arg. Clearly, there was no information pipeline between the virtual care vendor and my long-time PCP. To this virtual org, I was a new patient. 

This unanticipated task would certainly make me late for the visit, I figured. I also wondered if I would lose the session altogether. As I labored through the redundant info requests and Q/A, my visit time came and went. Now I’m the dreaded no-show. About 10 minutes beyond the scheduled visit time, my phone rang; it was an intake coordinator from the virtual care org asking for my whereabouts.

None of this was the coordinator’s fault, so I did my best to keep my cool. However, I didn’t hesitate to point the finger right at my surprising and cumbersome onboarding experience as the reason for my no-show. I also expressed concern that the delay might have derailed my visit altogether.

It didn’t, I was assured. But it did slide me down the queue. After another 20 minutes of form filling and additional wait time, a PA popped into the visit room and off we went.

“Don’t get me started”

Sam Virk, MD, CEO and founder of MediSprout, knows something about busted patient onboarding.

“The most shocking thing about your poor experience is that it’s common in healthcare,” Dr. Virk told me.

Ultimately, I got the care I was seeking after what might be viewed by some people as a minor inconvenience.

“For you perhaps,” said Dr. Virk, “But imagine if you were a mental health patient already suffering from anxiety. More anxiety during the onboarding process is the last thing you need; worsening the very condition for which you are seeking treatment.”  

And it’s not just about anxiety.

“You never know how your patient is feeling on a particular day. Avoiding additional challenges with patient onboarding and access is paramount to a successful first visit.”

Point taken. Treatment and care continuity, let alone strong therapeutic alliances, can all go sideways even before a first visit happens if access and onboarding aren’t designed with the needs of the patient in mind.

“It’s a broken process in healthcare, and not just in one place. Too often doctors are misinformed or have little to no access to patient records, communications between providers and patients routinely break down, and patients and providers both are saddled with redundant tasks.”

Hello.   

What’s wrong with this picture?

I related this story to Dr. Virk because I knew that it touches (if not hammers) on a subject close to his heart, and that is top of mind with the tech designers on the MediSprout team.

“We’ve heard stories like yours time and again from patients and providers. We know where the breakdowns are occurring, where the technology isn’t aligned and serving people the way we know it should and can.”

I also knew that there’s good news at the end of my streaks of good fortune:

“We know that integrating practice management and EHR platforms can eliminate redundancy. We know that by designing borderless technology we can facilitate faster and more efficient information sharing, cut down on errors, and drive better communication between all parties. And we know that by empowering patients with more control over their own care, engagement with healthcare will soar.”  

Put another way, there’s a fix. And MediSprout is all over it.

Greg Oberst is a senior writer for MediSprout.