The concept of a “digital front door” has become a main way to improve how patients interact with their healthcare providers. This approach uses digital tools to make scheduling, communication, and finding information easier. But as more people use these tools, healthcare leaders must find a way to balance digital convenience with important human contact. This balance helps serve all patient groups well.
This article looks at how integrated digital front doors help make patient access more inclusive by combining digital tools with personal support. It is based on recent studies, real examples, and planning ideas. It also talks about how artificial intelligence (AI) and workflow automation help improve front-office work to better support patients.
A digital front door is all the digital ways patients can get healthcare services. These include websites, phone apps, online appointment systems, chatbots, patient portals, and other interactive tools. The main goal is to remove barriers like long phone wait times, confusing paperwork, and limited office hours.
Mutaz Shegewi, a research director at IDC Insights, says a digital front door is “all digital touchpoints that help healthcare providers connect with patients throughout care.” This means services like scheduling appointments, paying bills, virtual visits, and looking at medical records are linked together.
Patients now want their healthcare experience to be like banks or airlines, where tasks can be done online whenever they want. The COVID-19 pandemic sped up the need for telehealth and remote care, making digital front doors almost necessary in healthcare.
Spending on digital front door technologies has grown a lot recently. In 2021, funding was $1.9 billion, up 67% from the year before. It might go past $2.5 billion by the end of 2022. This shows healthcare groups want to make access better and patient interaction smoother while dealing with staff shortages and more patients.
A survey by the Center for Connected Medicine found that 55% of U.S. health systems already use some kind of digital front door tech. Many more are planning to start soon. Online scheduling, provider profiles, and virtual care options now affect which healthcare providers patients choose, according to a Press Ganey satisfaction survey.
Examples like MedStar Health’s 24/7 patient app, Piedmont Healthcare’s mobile app with indoor directions, and Maimonides Medical Center’s MaimoCare platform show how some organizations use full digital tools alongside personal service.
Though digital front doors have many benefits, experts say it’s important to keep a mix of digital and human options to respect patient preferences and abilities. One health system leader said, “We need both human-centered and digital methods to give patients the best choices.”
Reasons for this balance include:
Healthcare leaders know that using digital front doors needs careful planning to improve patient access and operations. Meredith Inniger, a leader at VMG Health, says focusing on a few key issues that matter most, like cutting wait times, is very important.
Important parts of a good digital front door plan are:
Adding AI and automation to front-office work helps improve patient access and engagement. AI can automate boring, repeated tasks, letting staff focus on more important work.
Examples of AI and automation in digital front doors are:
Automating these tasks lowers staff workload, improves patient satisfaction, and cuts costs.
Some U.S. healthcare systems show how they use digital front doors with these ideas.
These examples show that while advanced digital doors exist, many groups still keep human contact as part of care.
Healthcare groups working on digital front doors should think about these challenges:
As healthcare responds to rising patient digital needs and staffing challenges, digital front doors will stay important in U.S. care. Combining AI automation with human help lets providers serve more patients, lower admin work, and keep care personal.
The future needs planning that is flexible and includes many team members. Health systems that choose this double approach will be better at meeting patient needs and the complex world of healthcare today. Balancing technology and human contact is needed not only for wider access but also to keep trust, clear communication, and quality in patient care.
A digital front door is a strategy used by healthcare institutions that encompasses all digital touchpoints where providers interact with patients to improve access, engagement, and patient experience throughout the care continuum, often replacing or supplementing traditional in-person tasks with digital tools.
Digital front doors allow patients to schedule appointments, research care options, manage care delivery, fill forms, pay bills, and even wait virtually, reducing physical visits and wait times. This leads to increased convenience, privacy, and engagement, enhancing overall patient satisfaction.
Investment in digital front door technologies surged to $1.9 billion in 2021 due to benefits like easing staff shortages, enabling asynchronous care such as remote patient monitoring, and meeting patient expectations for easy-access virtual care. Funding is expected to exceed $2.5 billion by the end of 2022.
Though the 2020 telehealth surge subsided, providers and patients still expect virtual and remote care options. Digital scheduling, provider profiles, and virtual visit capabilities now strongly influence patient choice of healthcare providers, maintaining high demand for digital front door solutions.
According to a Center for Connected Medicine survey, 55% of U.S. health systems have implemented some form of digital front door technology, with many others planning to adopt it in the future to increase digital patient access.
MedStar Health offers 24/7 scheduling, medical records access, and appointment reminders via app and website. Piedmont Healthcare includes a patient portal, app with wayfinding features, and a call center. Maimonides Medical Center developed a unified app to consolidate services like virtual visits, billing, and provider communication.
Challenges include patients preferring or requiring human interaction, fragmented platforms leading to multiple accounts, and limited adoption of virtual concierge services, financial experience vendors, and price transparency tools, which restrict a seamless patient experience.
Many leaders acknowledge the need to blend digital and human approaches to provide patients with optimal choices, as not all patients want or can use digital tools exclusively, ensuring inclusivity and personalized care access.
Virtual concierge services that assist with directing patients to appropriate care settings, patient financial experience services for managing payments, and price transparency tools are currently underutilized, indicating room for growth in digital front door functionalities.
Digital front doors enhance patient access by streamlining scheduling, providing medical information, and enabling virtual visits, which reduces burdens on staff and physical facilities. This leads to improved operational efficiency and can help alleviate challenges like staff shortages.
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