Why Digital Health Companies Need a CRM to Pair with their EHR

Why EHRs Should Integrate with CRMs for Digital Health Companies

Largely since 2020 healthcare has been rapidly becoming digitized, as many digital health startups are being created and providing solutions to a variety of health problems. With that, the use of EHRs (electronic health records) especially is growing more popular each year. With an annual growth rate of 6.2%, the EHR market is projected to grow from USD $29.4 million to USD $42.2 million by 2028¹.

EHRs consist of a patient’s medical information from most if not all of the healthcare providers that they have gone through and are available online for the patient to access at their convenience². However, EHRs aren’t only beneficial for patients. While primarily designed for billing and charting, they allow for better coordination and less miscommunication between different healthcare providers, inevitably improving the care that patients then receive³.

Although healthcare has transformed with EHRs, they don’t entirely meet the needs of modern digital health companies. When paired alongside a CRM (customer relationship management), it allows for not only a more improved patient experience but benefits care teams as well. Rather than thinking of each other as competition, EHR and CRM companies should collaborate to allow healthcare organizations to build and provide the best experience for their users. With both systems working together they will be able to further advance digital healthcare and provide services that optimize  patient and care team satisfaction. From a study done by pCare, it was found that 95% of healthcare providers that paired their services with a CRM had better patient experiences⁴. In this blog, we explain why EHRs need to pair with CRMs for the benefit of their patients and their care teams.

1) Improved Patient Experiences

Healthcare can be difficult for patients to navigate, but it shouldn’t have to be. Although EHRs typically provide some convenience to patients like a portal, information isn’t often presented nicely to the patient and is most often used for just secure messaging. CRMs can help care teams deliver patients better communication experiences and often integrate with a custom patient app. Expectations for digital health have also increased, as 65% of healthcare organizations reported that patients' needs for “technology-enabled healthcare experiences” have grown⁵.

Whether patients want to contact their providers through text, phone calls, emails, or in-app chat, CRMs allow patients the freedom to choose what’s best for their healthcare journey⁶. Additionally, on-demand services where patients can ask their providers any questions or schedule appointments based on their schedule help in making healthcare more accessible and convenient. This is important when 77% of consumers say that convenience is their number one need when considering digital health options⁷. Not only do CRMs lead to patients feeling more empowered, this leads to higher engagement and more involvement in their healthcare decision-making⁸.

2) Facilitates Team Collaboration

Equipped with a CRM, your care team can efficiently work together to ensure no patient-related tasks slip through the cracks. Using automated workflows, team members are able to focus on their patients without being burdened with repetitive tasks like sending out patient reminders, assigning tasks, or collecting patient data⁹. As a result, this allows your care team to be more productive in other ways. With additional capacity, care team members can focus more on personal patient outreach and ways to provide the best patient experience possible.

With more capacity, companies are able to scale patient care more easily, as they grow. In addition to improving care team efficiency, CRMs help connect different departments like clinical, marketing, and customer support to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Utilizing a CRM is ultimately a cheaper option than hiring new employees to do manual tasks, helping companies save money that could be used in other ways to improve their services¹⁰.

‍3) Builds A Better Understanding of what the Patient Needs

With EHRs, they made it so that a lot of data has become available to us online. This data can often be analyzed through data visualization tools to help figure out the best methods to care for your patient. With access to your patient’s health history and background information, care teams can further tailor the care that they provide through analytics. Patients can be frustrated if they’re asked the same questions every time they see their provider. This was an especially big issue when we see that 61% of doctors don’t already know their patients’ allergies or when 49% of doctors don’t know what medicine their patients are on¹¹. When patients see that their providers don’t know important facts about their medical history, they can become more reluctant in trusting them and withhold important information or questions. In turn, this results in potentially harmful outcomes where providers don’t know all the information necessary to truly help their patients with their health issues in the best way possible.

A more in-depth patient profile is essential for care teams to understand their patients, however, CRMs help expand on that information and allow providers to be one step ahead in their patients’ care journeys. Being able to analyze patterns and trends with each patient can help care teams determine when to best engage with the patient or what methods are most optimal for getting their patient to become more involved.

CRMs can also show the bigger picture with all of your patients and see what’s working and what’s not overall¹². This information can be used to help improve your company and the strategies that you and your team are using. As patient expectations grow, so do digital health companies to accommodate those needs while competing with one another to become the most attractive solution and option.  

Wrapping it Up

EHRs are incredibly useful and have undeniably helped shape digital health to benefit the patient and make healthcare decisions easier. However, there is room for growth as patient expectations and demands increase overtime. With so many digital health startups being built every day, your company has to work towards being the best solution for most if not all of your users’ needs to stay competitive with the rest of the industry.

We hope that this blog was helpful in showing you why your EHR should be paired with a CRM. If you’re building a new company in healthcare we’d love to hear from you to see if Tellescope’s Patient CRM can help you deliver a great patient experience. Email us today at inquiries@tellescope.com to learn more!