Kyruus Blog

As expectations for digital self-service continue to grow, healthcare organizations should regularly assess their digital front door experiences to ensure they are meeting consumers' needs—and their own—so they can remain competitive and attract new patients.

2020 was a year filed with change and learning–learning how to operate access centers remotely, learning how to accelerate digital roadmaps, and learning how to launch and scale virtual care programs. And as we continue to deal with the pandemic and plan for the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine to people across the country, many of us continue to find ourselves in a position of learning. This desire for knowledge (and accessing it) will be essential over the coming months and it is also something that is clear from our most read content pieces–healthcare leaders need the latest insights into how consumers find and access care, analytics to understand the state of their access experience, and proven strategies from other organizations on how to transform digital access. To stay informed in 2021 and make a difference in how patients access care, check out the list below of the four most downloaded resources from 2020:

How to read this graph: The boxes represent if a term appeared in the top 10 condition-based search terms for a day within a given week, while the darkness of the color represents the volume of the searches for those terms.* As of this week, the CDC reported more than 1M confirmed cases of COVID-19 and close to 70K deaths across the United States. Yet, despite these grim figures, data indicates that several states may have reached their peaks, including former hotspot, New York City, where there has been a continued decline in both deaths and hospitalizations due to COVID-19. Meanwhile, other states have already begun the process of reopening their economies. So now the conversation for health systems is starting to shift from simply how to respond to the pandemic to what steps to take to move forward and open up more access for unrelated appointment needs.

Since the COVID-19 virus emerged in the U.S., the country’s health systems and hospitals have felt a significant strain on their resources and staff as they continue to face rising volumes of patients. Amid this chaos, many organizations have risen to the challenge, using technology to expand access and relieve some of the pressure on their limited resources. Here are some of the ways health systems are using technology to expand access to care during the pandemic:

How to read this graph: The bars illustrate the total number of searches for a term (e.g. diabetes) over the month via the Kyruus ProviderMatch platform and the heatmap breaks the data out by week. While people across the world have had to adjust their lives in the face of the coronavirus crisis, hospitals, health systems, their staff, and the patients turning to them for care have undoubtedly felt the greatest impact. Healthcare organizations face the tough task of not only caring for the influx of patients needing assessment and care for coronavirus, but also ensuring they effectively facilitate care for patients in their communities with non-COVID-related medical needs, such as chronic conditions, mental health, and cancer.

As the world becomes increasingly digitized, patients are looking to interact with healthcare the same way they look for flights on Kayak or make a dinner reservation on OpenTable–with speed and convenience. And as health systems look to respond, understanding consumer behavior and the patient journey will be critical to delivering a user experience that successfully meets patients’ needs and expectations. Whether your organization is looking to do so by revamping your website or building a new mobile app, here are a few design best practices from our work with consumers to help your team deliver user experiences that delight.