For most of the past decade, health system leaders have been bombarded by salespeople and trade show reps pitching solutions that will help them with their “digital front doors”—a blanket term for collections of technologies meant to manage and improve the patient experience. The promise has always been that these tools will help organizations acquire new patients and then keep them over the long term. But so far, the digital front door hasn’t really done much to advance health systems toward these goals.
In some cases, the utilization of tools has been wildly overstated—chatbots in the industry are ubiquitous, and yet 95% of patients ignore them completely. In others, new features end up confusing patients. But at the most basic level, digital front door solutions have failed to help health systems address one of their most frustrating pain points: new patient registration.
In designing our Rapid Registration tool, Amenities Health sought to alleviate three main sources of friction that make it more difficult to onboard new patients:
Limited Digital Channels: Many health systems don’t even offer new patients the option of registering through their websites, mobile apps, or patient portals. This not only results in frustration and inconvenience, but it defeats the entire point of building a digital front door. What good is a door, after all, if you can’t open it? Instead, health systems often require people to register for their patient portals through an electronic health record (EHR) provider. This adds unnecessary steps and time to the process, which makes it more likely that prospective patients will leave for a competitor. Rapid Registration, by contrast, gives new patients a frictionless self-service experience that expedites access to health systems’ platforms. By replacing registration processes they inherited from their EHR vendors—and focusing on the patient experience—health systems can drive engagement, acquisition, and long-term retention.
Cumbersome Processes: Existing registration methods typically rely on native EHR solutions that require lengthy, convoluted processes. Rather than simply collecting unique identifying information from patients, these systems leverage antiquated identity verification systems offered by major credit reporting agencies. To register, patients must answer a series of questions about things like the name of their street from two moves ago, which lender they used for their first mortgage, and what vehicle was registered under their name in 1996. Health systems tend to lose around 20 percent of people with every additional question—and that’s if they can even remember the street they lived on during their sophomore year of college. This process is completely unnecessary, and it’s a result of the fact that EHR vendors tend not to spend a great deal of time thinking about the patient experience. Compare this process to Rapid Registration. We ask for a cell phone number and date of birth, verify the person’s identity with a telco provider, send them a link, and they’re registered. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
Lost Access Codes: Currently, patients often have to deal with lost or expired access codes that hinder their ability to complete registrations. Most of the time, these access codes are sent via email, and they are often categorized by email filters as spam, meaning they never make their way to patients. Without the access code—which typically expires in a few days, patients are forced to call in and navigate IT support over the phone. So, even if health systems make online registration available, and even if patients are willing to endure the cumbersome experience of EHR portal registration, something as simple as a missing access code can derail the entire process. In Rapid Registration, we ask patients if they have an access code. If they don’t, we allow them to register anyway. We can still verify their identity and avoid duplicate accounts, without all the trouble.
When sales reps tout the benefits of digital front door technologies, they often tout soft or vague benefits. But streamlining registration for new patients yields tangible, measurable results. Our founder and CEO created these processes in a previous role as lead of digital innovation at a Top 15 health system. Within 18 months the system saw more than 500,000 net new patients register for its mobile app, contributing over $300 million in net new contribution margin. Even today, the system registers over 200,000 net new patients per year via the mobile app. With Rapid Registration, health system apps and EHR portals don’t just add value for existing patients. Rather, they become a powerful tool for health systems to acquire new patients and earn brand loyalty.
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