Daniel Litwer, chief client officer at Press Ganey

Digital Health

CVS and Microsoft Partner on Digital-First Care

CVS Health is wasting little time with its transformation into an “integrated health solutions company.” Less than a month after unveiling its omnichannel strategy, CVS announced a new five-year strategic partnership with Microsoft focused on digital health and personalized care.

The partnership is centered on leveraging Microsoft’s computing capabilities to unlock value from CVS’ treasure trove of patient and consumer data. CVS is in a unique position to know a patient’s provider choices (through its Aetna payor arm), medication history (through CVS pharmacy), and even shopping habits (through its retail stores).

Now, the company has enlisted Microsoft to tie it all together, with key goals of:

• Customizing care by combining information from across the company to deliver customized health recommendations while scaling loyalty and personalization programs.
• Enabling front line workers through the use of Microsoft Teams and Office products, allowing retail employees to quickly consume information and solve customer needs.
• Digitizing operations through Azure’s cognitive services like computer vision and text analytics to automate tasks such as pharmacy intake.
• Expanding cloud services by migrating applications currently running on on-site servers to Azure, giving CVS access to over 1,500 new business apps.

The Takeaway

The partnership announcement adds color to the picture of what CVS’ transformation from a local pharmacy to a healthcare destination might look like.

Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure enables CVS to take a more proactive approach to its services, including preventative health recommendations, like when a patient is due for a screening, or automated reminders to pick up sunscreen if a customer has an increased risk of melanoma.

CVS has millions of customers between its retail operations and health plan enrollees, and this partnership allows it to use this data to reach people ”with the right services, through the right channels, at the right time.”

Patient Engagement

Digital Experience Key to Patient Acquisition

The digital patient experience and online provider reviews continue to see a growing role in both acquiring and retaining patients, according to Press Ganey’s 2021 Consumer Experience Trends in Healthcare.

The report includes key drivers behind current healthcare consumer behaviors based on a survey of over 1,000 adult patients. Several themes emerged from the responses, each highlighting the fact that healthcare consumerism is on the rise, and here to stay.

Digital drives choice. Patients utilize digital resources 2.2x more than provider referrals

when choosing a healthcare provider.

• Ratings and reviews are the top influence on a consumer’s decision to book an appointment, followed by referrals from a current doctor.
• The average patient looks at 5.5 online reviews before selecting a new provider.
• 61% report that poor-quality reviews would discourage them from choosing a provider.

Search engines are just the start. While search engines are the most used online resource during care-seeking (65%), consumers use an average of 2.7 different sites for research.

• Since 2019, there has been a 54% increase in the usage of healthcare review sites (e.g. Healthgrades and Vitals). 
• By contrast, there’s been a 23% decline in the search engine use over the same period.
• 47% of patients search for the type of doctor they’re looking for and “near me,” while only 16% search for their condition or treatment needed

Customer service is the new bedside manner. Patients rate “customer service” (71%) and “communication” (63%) as more important than “bedside manner” when it comes to a five-star experience.  

The Takeaway

The above trends indicate a steady convergence between healthcare and retail behavior. Consumers use similar criteria to book a hotel or dinner reservation as they do to find a doctor, and they’re growing accustomed to using online reviews to share and research the experience.

While the need to have a “digital mindset” is getting to the point of being a healthcare platitude, the Press Ganey report does a great job emphasizing the fact that a digital strategy involves not only the online patient experience, but also the cultivation of a good online reputation.

Explore Nuance’s Personalized Patient Experience

Personalized digital experiences drive better outcomes for patients and providers. Explore how Nuance is using AI automation to advance the quality of service across the care journey here.

The Wire

• Carbon Health Diabetes Assessment: Hybrid care provider Carbon Health is launching a metabolic health assessment program that uses continuous glucose monitoring to find patients at high risk for diabetes. Carbon Health has quickly been putting the $350M it raised in July to work, with the new program arriving within months of its acquisition of diabetes management company Steady Health and remote patient monitoring provider Alertive Health.

• App Gamification: A systematic review of 38 studies from researchers at Clemson University found that mental health mobile apps are generally effective in reducing depressive symptoms, but that gamification elements such as rewards and leaderboards do not have a significant impact on effectiveness. The findings suggest that gamification elements might be less effective for this population, given that depression is often associated with lower sensitivity to rewards.

• Style Over Branding: A recent article on venture capital firm a16z’s blog explores how consumers are increasingly choosing software based on a stylistic connection when deciding between similar services. The author makes the case that modern software’s shift to a “monotonously quirky, safe” aesthetic (this sums it up in one picture) has a broad appeal, but isn’t particularly compelling to any individual. This has caused many people to begin preferring software with a design that conveys personality, a useful lesson for any digital health company with user-facing technology.

• Remote Cancer Care: A survey of 202 multidisciplinary cancer care clinicians published in JAMA found that 76% are satisfied with telehealth and wish to maintain or increase future use. Most respondents (59%) thought that video is adequate to manage general patient care, while fewer found it acceptable for end-of-life discussions (49%) or new diagnosis (35%). Outside of video and telephone visits, physicians cited asynchronous secure messaging with patients as a must-have feature for successful care.

• Solera Mental Health: Solera Health, which connects patients to a curated assortment of health solutions, is adding both Ginger and eMindful to its partner network. eMindful offers evidence-based mindfulness programs for chronic condition management, while Ginger (aka Headspace Health) provides access to mobile-first mental healthcare and on-demand teletherapy.

• Truepill Virtual Care: Digital health platform Truepill is launching an end-to-end COVID-19 solution that will enable its partners to create white-labeled virtual care experiences incorporating on-demand telehealth and next-day delivery of oral antiviral medication. The announcement comes just days after FDA advisers recommended authorizing the first antiviral pill to prevent high-risk patients from developing severe illness.

• HHS Telehealth Report: An HHS study analyzed Medicare data to understand changes in virtual care behavior during the pandemic, finding that telehealth visits increased 63x last year, from 840k in 2019 to 53M in 2020. Behavioral health saw the largest increase in remote visits, with telehealth accounting for one-third of all behavioral health visits in 2020, versus 8% for primary care and 3% for specialty care.

• Babyscripts’ Series B: Virtual obstetrics platform Babyscripts announced that additional investors have joined its Series B funding round, bringing the total raise to $19M. The funding will accelerate the roll out of Babyscripts Virtual Maternity Care solution to providers across the US as the company works towards automating the care delivery process so that patient risks can be identified and addressed “without the need for administrative input.”

• Telehealth Compliance: Epstein Becker Green’s 2021 Telemental Health Laws survey revealed a rise of telefraud schemes during 2021, with September alone seeing the DOJ target nearly 150 defendants for participation in various healthcare schemes resulting in $1.4B in alleged losses. The findings demonstrate that the telehealth industry should not only consider the law from a policy perspective, but should also invest in a robust compliance infrastructure.

• Healthful Launch: A new startup called Healthful recently spun out of Vituity’s innovation hub, aiming to use an AI-equipped support platform to help patients navigate care. Healthful’s platform enables care teams to determine which patients will benefit the most from navigation assistance, then gives patients personalized guidance to bridge the gap between acute care and the home setting.