Today, more than half of the U.S. adult population has at least one chronic health condition, and upward of 40% have multiple. These chronic diseases – heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease included – are the nation’s leading causes of death, disability and healthcare costs. In fact, some 90% of the nation’s $4.1 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures are spent on treating chronic and mental health conditions.

The complexities and expenses associated with chronic diseases make their prevention and treatment burdensome; plus, the challenges are being compounded. Facing the rising prevalence of chronic diseases, an aging population and worsening shortage of primary care physicians, the treatment and prevention pathways of chronic diseases are on track to get even worse.

It’s clear: the way our healthcare system has long treated chronic diseases, with occasional check-ins and at-home management, isn’t enough. Why? The problem of adherence to at-home chronic disease management remains unsolved. But technology offers a remedy.

Here we explore 3 ways primary care and lifestyle medicine providers can utilize digital wellness solutions to help patients stay on track after, and in between, their in-person appointments.

No. 1 : Establish regular connections

The current management model for chronic health conditions is failing patients. Today, patients schedule appointments, undergo testing and receive diagnoses, treatment plans and medicine. Often, patients are then left to their own devices. Providers can do better. Utilizing a digital wellness solution, providers can fill in the gaps between appointments to check in on patients and monitor their progress and adherence to recommended treatment plans. These regular patient-provider connections can establish trust and foster meaningful engagement that drives lifestyle changes, treatment consistency and healthy outcomes.

No. 2 : Provide convenient, flexible care

Patient lives aren’t linear. They have ups and downs, take left turns and don’t always go according to plan. This means to truly be effective, treatment plans should factor in a level of flexibility that allows patients to adjust their care and goals as their lives inevitably shift. Whether a patient is trying to lose weight, quit smoking, reduce stressors or improve their overall health, providers can now offer convenient, flexible care pathways that address individual health issues and goals digitally. With the right tool, providers can launch on-demand courses, content and videos that educate patients with quick information hits and tips on improving their health and reducing chronic disease risks when it’s convenient.

No. 3: Enhance patient experiences

With digitally enabled at-home support, providers can boost patient engagement. How? By delivering personalized care experiences that align with an individual’s lifestyle, health needs, goals and learning styles. Providers can now launch, and scale, patient-specific care pathways with the help of digital tools that automate personalized support, patient reminders and content specific to a patient’s health conditions and interests.

As providers grapple with how best to manage the continued strains on staffing, the growing number of aging patients, the rise in chronic conditions and increased patient needs, they need to consider the available technology solutions bridging the widening gaps in healthcare. By leveraging a digital wellness solution, providers can support patients beyond their in-person appointments to make chronic disease management easier and patient goals achievable.

Discover how Avidon Health’s Engagement Rx^® can aid primary care and lifestyle medicine providers in helping patients achieve lasting outcomes in their health, to ultimately prevent and treat chronic disease, get in touch with our team.

The health of our nation is at a critical level. Today, it’s estimated 6 in 10 American adults have a chronic disease, with 40% of adults having two or more such diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the prevalence of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity and other chronic illnesses, lifestyle medicine is needed now more  than ever.

With the potential to prevent, and reverse, chronic diseases, lifestyle medicine providers can effectively drive change to help individuals add years to their lives. And yet, barriers to positive outcomes exist – predominantly where patient engagement is concerned. How can providers keep patients engaged after their appointments and throughout their journey to better health? Personalized care with the help of the right technology.

Here we look at how digital wellness tools equipped with automation technology can help lifestyle medicine providers see benefits in their practices and patient populations.

Increased motivation for lasting lifestyle changes

Often, individuals are highly motivated to make critical lifestyle changes when they, or a family member, are diagnosed with a chronic illness or present risk indicators of disease. This a-ha moment is the first step in helping individuals improve their health and well-being.

With digital wellness technology, lifestyle medicine providers can capitalize on these moments of realization and early motivation to engage patients with vital educational offerings to better understand health issues. Providers can now easily launch personalized online courses, with on-demand content, videos and articles, to educate and engage patients throughout every stage of their health and wellness journey. Whether it is for weight management, fitness, sleep, smoking cessation or healthy eating, these convenient, microlearning courses keep patients on track to achieve lasting health goals.

Streamlined communication and administrative operations

Lifestyle medicine providers transform lives, but often get bogged down by administrative tasks and are often limited by short appointments. With digital tools at their fingertips, providers can now deliver individualized care at scale, driving positive patient and practice outcomes beyond the clinic.

For providers looking to streamline their communications, send patient reminders, save time on administrative operations and enhance their program offerings, automated digital wellness tools could be their all-in-one solution. With digital tools like Engagement Rx^®, clinics can automate the delivery of personalized content – addressing everything from substance use to stress management – while sending encouraging patient messages and program reminders. Providers can effectively, and automatically, educate patients, boost engagement, track progress and encourage patient participation without the employee involvement.

Improved patient engagement, retention and outcomes

As chronic diseases maintain a stronghold on U.S. adults, lifestyle medicine providers need tools that help, not hinder, their practices. With digital wellness tools – like Engagement Rx – providers can hyperfocus on what they do best: treat the whole patient to prevent and reverse chronic health issues. Such tools have a number of positive outcomes, including:

• Increased Knowledge: With the ability to launch on-demand educational courses, content and videos, providers can easily provide patients with bite-sized information and tips on improving health and reducing health risks whenever it’s convenient.
• Deeper Engagement: Providing discrete, digital communication tools and learning options, providers can ensure patients feel supported and secure as they address their health and wellness needs and work toward their goals in a safe, private manner.
• Better Outcomes: By facilitating the delivery of additional program offerings and opportunities for digital engagement, providers can inspire patients to stay motivated, increase program retention and, ultimately, see more positive health outcomes.

Lifestyle medicine providers are ideally positioned to help adults nationwide improve their health while preventing, treating and reversing chronic diseases – and with the right digital tool, there’s no limit to the positive impact providers can have on patient outcomes.

Contact our team for more information on how our all-in-one digital wellness platform and automation technology can help practices engage patients and drive positive outcomes.

Technology, such as digital wellness programs, is helping to reshape the health and wellness industry, enabling providers to deliver personalized care at scale that’s accessible when, where, and how participants prefer. It’s helping providers work smarter, not harder, to streamline programs and deliver engaging, personalized care and content that drives results.

Leveraging technology and automation, for everything from program enrollment, content, reminders, and surveys, health and wellness providers can communicate with participants and keep them engaged along every step of their health and wellness journey. Here we explore the automations that can increase the performance of health and wellness programs:

No. 1: Automating your onboarding process

We think it’s safe to say no one wants to be bogged down in paperwork – even if it’s digital. Providers can eliminate clunky onboarding processes with the help of digital wellness solutions. How? Automation. By automating their onboarding, providers give program participants the freedom to fill out intake forms and answer questionnaires at their own pace and convenience. This gives providers the opportunity to ask more in-depth questions and gain insights into the lifestyle choices, preferences and goals of program participants.

With a deeper understanding of how participants think, act, learn, and communicate at the start of their health and wellness journeys, providers can quickly launch personalized content and care. That’s essential in the health and wellness sector, where providers need to seize the opportunity to engage participants when they are most enthusiastic about enacting change.

It begins with creating an easy onboarding process that allows program participants to dive right into the good stuff – that is the content, learning, and results, they want, fast.

No. 2: Automating your educational resources

With the right tech in hand, providers can automate the delivery of educational resources that supplement in-person, or one-on-one, coaching. The ability to easily launch personalized content that meets the needs of each and every participant gives providers the ability to meet people where they are, with the content and tools they need anytime and anywhere.

With every automation, it’s important to consider how people communicate and utilize preferred methods to spark engagement. Take SMS (text) for example. Studies show that as people turn more frequently to their phones for everything from shopping to health visits, they are opening more text messages than emails. In fact, SMS open rates hover between 90-99% depending on who you ask. This casual mode of communication with a more personal feel should be considered as a prime channel for all sharing and communications.

No. 3: Automating your participant reminders

We’ve all experienced the dreaded New Year’s resolution slump. You know that point along the road to better eating or steady exercise where life has other plans and your enthusiasm wanes. It’s a tale as old as time, but it’s also one technology and automation are rewriting.

Providers have long grappled with the precipitous challenge of inspiring participants, and keeping them engaged, throughout the duration of their health and wellness journeys. Now, thanks to automation, when motivation dwindles or progress stalls, providers can deliver energizing program reminders that give participants that jolt of inspiration they need.

By simply automating reminders (especially via text), providers can inspire participants to complete modules, delve into content, and show up for one-on-one sessions. What’s more: providers can automate personalized messages of support that encourage participants to continue making health-positive decisions and stay on track with their goals.

No. 4: Automating your program feedback

Participants in health and wellness programs come ready and willing to make a change. In doing so, they open themselves up to accepting feedback from providers about the choices they make in their day-to-day lives. If providers emulate this openness to feedback, they can gain actionable insight into their programs, services, and participant reception and results.

Soliciting honest participant feedback in both in-person and virtual settings, however, can be challenging. Here’s where automation comes into play once more. Providers can automate the sending of participant surveys and feedback forms to learn about their individual program progress, goals, and how they are liking the coaching program. By automating insight-gathering tools, providers can use participant experiences to make improvements during a participant’s journey to build strong provider-patient relationships and drive results.

To learn more about how technology and automation can help providers engage and inspire health and wellness program participants throughout every step of their lifestyle-change journey, contact our team.

Struggling with digital wellness engagement? Here are five tips.

Time to read: 5 minutes
By Clark Lagemann

Wellness programs and health coaching can only make a difference if the participants are engaged. In today’s world with unlimited options for entertainment and fitness, it can be a challenge to keep program participants engaged. Personalization of the coaching experience, customized content, and streamlined onboarding are all key to improving program retention, but each of those aspects can be challenging to implement at scale.

In his latest article for HR.com, Clark Lagemann, CEO of Avidon Health shares his top tips to for improving digital wellness engagement. Read his article “Overcoming The Five Biggest Hurdles To Digital Wellness Engagement” to learn more.

You can also view the complete issue of “Human Experience Excellence: Engagement Performance, Rewards and Recognition” from HR.com in an interactive magazine here or download a PDF here.

Click here to read the full article.

For contributed media inquiries, contact:
Kristin Hege
kristin@conveycommsagency.com
480-540-6496