PATIENT ENGAGEMENT SOFTWARE
Targeted engagement to improve patient care
Attract new patients and keep them coming back with Phreesia’s patient engagement software
What is patient engagement software?
Patient engagement software is a suite of digital tools that lets you engage with patients throughout their healthcare journey—before, during and after their visit.
Healthcare organizations rely on patient engagement software to deliver a more convenient, personalized experience at every critical touchpoint—scheduling, registration, payments and more. By implementing a patient engagement platform, your organization can stand out from the competition and become patients’ go-to choice for care.
Use patient engagement software to:
- Maintain a constant line of communication with patients
- Drive follow-up appointments and enhance quality performance
- Screen patients for clinical needs and social risks
- Collect patients’ direct feedback in real time
- Share announcements with your patient population
- Monitor how your patients are interacting with you
Components of patient engagement software
For most healthcare organizations, increasing patient engagement is a top priority—and patient intake software can help. Here’s what you should look for in a patient engagement platform:
Online scheduling
Automated appointment reminders
Digital patient intake
Payment collections
Health Campaigns
Patient communication
Patient satisfaction surveys
Health system and practice-level analytics
Patient activation
Online scheduling
Give patients an easy, convenient way to book a visit with online scheduling from Phreesia. Our platform lets patients schedule or request an appointment directly from their own device—anytime, anywhere.
Phreesia lets you automatically notify patients when their appointments are scheduled, helping to alleviate administrative work for your clinic schedulers, front-office staff or call center. Plus, our tailored workflows let you customize your appointment request form to meet your organization’s unique rules and templates.
Phreesia’s self-scheduling tool gives my staff time to do things other than be on the phone. Our patients and their parents can schedule their own appointments online without an app, and it allows us to easily fill up our appointment slots.”
– Shayna Smith, MD, Flourish Pediatrics
Automated appointment reminders
Make fewer phone calls and minimize no-shows with Phreesia’s automated appointment reminders. You can send reminders to patients in three different ways—email, text message or automated voice call—and let them confirm, reschedule or request to cancel their appointment directly from the message. Plus, you can customize your reminder messages to increase patients’ response rates.
Don’t waste time playing phone tag. Instead, use Phreesia’s automated appointment reminders to simplify communication, keep clinicians’ schedules full and support more accessible, inclusive ways to engage patients about their care.
78% fewer no-shows among patients who use Phreesia to confirm their appointments
46% more appointments confirmed or canceled using voice reminders
Digital patient intake
Want to automate manual, repetitive tasks and give your staff more time to accomplish meaningful work? Phreesia can help.
Phreesia’s award-winning patient intake platform offers customized check-in workflows across a wide range of modalities, including:
- Phreesia Mobile: Give patients a flexible check-in experience, no matter where they are—at home, on the go or in your office.
- Phreesia PadX: Turn any iPad® into a convenient, in-office registration solution with the Phreesia PadX application.
- Intake for Telehealth: Streamlined, customizable intake workflows that help you manage virtual visits at scale.
- Arrivals: A registration kiosk with wayfinding features to meet the needs of health systems and large medical practices.
Want to see if Phreesia integrates with your EHR? Find out here >
84% of patients check themselves in
5+ minutes of staff time saved per self-service check-in
iPad® is a registered trademark of Apple Inc.
Payment collections
We get it—your staff has a lot going on. That’s why Phreesia’s revenue cycle management tools help automate key steps in the payment process, saving everyone time and helping you collect more, faster.
With Phreesia, you can offer your patients several ways to conveniently pay copays and balances without any extra staff work required. Our convenient bill-pay options include Apple Pay® and Google Pay™, and you can keep tabs on all payments with PM system integrations that automate end-of-day reconciliation. Plus, you can automatically charge patients’ cards on file to collect outstanding balances after insurance claims are adjudicated—no mailed statements or follow-up calls required.
Use Phreesia to see:
- Increased collections
- Faster payments
- Less bad debt
- Fewer hard costs
- Staff time savings
Increase time-of-service collections by up to 50% when payments are collected through Phreesia
With Phreesia, more than 80% of patients pay their copays at the time of service
Apple Pay® is a registered trademark of Apple Inc.
Health Campaigns
Phreesia’s Health Campaigns allow you to connect with patients before, during or after their visit with tailored messages that engage them in their care, drive follow-up appointments and enhance quality performance for your organization.
You can use Health Campaigns, for example, to share patient education materials with specific populations—including those with chronic conditions, immunocompromised individuals, pregnant people and older adults. These messages work in tandem with your clinical workflows, allowing patients to easily follow up and schedule the appropriate appointments for them, such as Medicare annual wellness visits or diabetic eye exams.
Phreesia provides you with standard patient engagement content, including templates for:
- Annual wellness visits (Medicare, Adult, Pediatric)
- Breast cancer screening (mammogram)
- Recall patients for cancelled and no-show appointments
- Convert upcoming visits to telehealth
Patient communication
Need a patient messaging platform that meets your patients where they are? We can help.
Phreesia’s patient communications software lets you text individual patients directly about their upcoming virtual or in-person visit right from the Phreesia Dashboard. Your staff can use two-way text messaging to let patients know when they’re ready to be seen, or to notify them that their provider is running behind schedule. In addition, Phreesia allows staff to reach out to patients who haven’t yet showed up in the virtual waiting room for their scheduled telehealth visit.
Phreesia also offers HIPAA-compliant patient messaging with PhreesiaOnCall, our after-hours answering solution. PhreesiaOnCall lets your providers communicate quickly with patients from anywhere via text message—even to securely exchange photos and videos.
Communicating with patients can feel like a challenge—but it doesn’t have to. Use Phreesia’s patient engagement system to streamline patient messaging, easily engage with patients and deliver a better, more convenient patient experience.
Patient satisfaction surveys
Do you know what patients think about your practice? Phreesia’s post-visit satisfaction surveys give you the power to find out more about your patients’ healthcare experience.
Designed to align with industry standards, our patient surveys allow you to track your Net Promoter Score, measure key drivers of patient satisfaction, direct patients to online review sites and more. Staff can also receive real-time alerts if a patient responds poorly to a survey.
Better yet, Phreesia’s patient surveys are built with reputation management in mind. When a patient responds positively to a survey, we’ll automatically prompt them to leave an online review about their experience, helping you generate a higher volume of patient reviews, get found online and support practice growth.
Learn more about patient satisfaction surveys >
Phreesia [has] helped us detect trends and given us more insight into what patients really think … We’re getting valuable feedback that we can work on to improve their experience.”
– Angela Thomas, Certified Medical Assistant, CovenantCare Practices
Health system and practice-level analytics
How well is your patient outreach working? Use Phreesia Analytics to understand how patients receive and interact with your communications.
- View open rates for email and text messages
- Track click-through rates for every email you send
- Generate reports identifying which patients are interested in your clinical research or other promoted services
Patient activation
Leverage the patient intake process to create sustainable programs that engage patients in their care, educate them about your ancillary services, and communicate with them before, during and after their visit for a seamless patient experience.
Want to keep patients engaged and activate them in their care?
Learn 10 best practices for patient activation >
Frequently asked questions about patient engagement software
Got questions? We have answers. Use the FAQ to learn how you can find the best patient engagement software for your healthcare organization’s needs.
What does patient engagement software do?
Patient engagement software is a category of technology that helps healthcare staff and providers engage with existing and prospective patients anywhere, anytime.
Traditionally, healthcare organizations have relied on phone calls and paper mailers to engage with patients outside of a visit. But in today’s digital landscape, most medical practices need a better system for communicating with patients and increasing patient engagement—and that’s where patient engagement software shines.
With a patient engagement platform, your healthcare organization can use technologies that patients are already comfortable with—such as emails and text messages—to engage them at every touchpoint in their healthcare journey. The end results are higher patient loyalty, less wasted time and a better patient experience overall.
In addition, healthcare organizations can use a patient engagement platform as a valuable marketing tool. Your organization might, for example, send an outreach message letting patients know about a new service line—and prompt them to schedule an appointment directly from the message. In doing so, you can increase utilization of your services, drive greater revenue and make your organization patients’ go-to choice for care.
How much does patient engagement software cost?
Due to the wide variety of patient engagement platforms available today, you’re likely to encounter a range of price points. In addition, some third-party technology vendors may charge different fees depending on features, usage or your organization’s size, among other factors.
Most patient engagement systems, if not all, should offer patient messaging as a core functionality. But your actual cost may vary depending on which additional features you want to use, such as:
- Self-scheduling and appointment request capabilities
- Automated appointment reminders and confirmations
- Digital tools for check-in and pre-visit registration
- Online payment options and digital statements
- Post-visit patient satisfaction surveys
- Templated intervisit and outreach content
- Real-time analytics and reporting tools
When comparing pricing between two or more patient engagement vendors, you should also consider the following factors:
- Does the vendor only offer flat-rate pricing that could disproportionately cost small medical practices more money?
- Does the patient engagement software bidirectionally integrate with my organization’s EHR or PM system?
- Is the patient engagement software HIPAA-compliant?
- Are there bundled pricing options if my organization purchases multiple features, or would we have to pay for each feature separately?
- Can my organization “lock in” a price for an extended period, or would we be exposed to pricing that may fluctuate monthly?
- Does the vendor offer a free trial period that allows my organization to use the patient engagement software without any risk or commitment?
No matter your size, location or patient demographic, Phreesia offers a variety of bundled pricing options tailored for you. Request a free quote to learn more about our patient engagement software.
What are the benefits of patient engagement software?
Patient engagement software provides numerous benefits. By implementing a patient engagement system, you can:
Improve efficiency: Communicating with patients is typically a time-consuming task for staff and providers, involving endless phone calls and reams of paper. Patient engagement software automates communication at every touchpoint, helping your organization efficiently interact with patients without taking up your staff’s valuable time.
Boost transparency: How do you share appointment-related information with your patients? What about time-sensitive updates, such as asking patients to re-sign annual consents? With patient engagement software, you can save templated messages and automatically send them to relevant patients at whatever cadence you choose. That means your patients will have greater visibility into the announcements that matter most to them—and your staff won’t have to spend time making phone calls or drafting emails.
Offer convenience: Patients enjoy using technology to manage their daily lives—healthcare included. With a patient engagement platform, your patients can book appointments, check in, make payments and communicate with your office on their own time, from wherever they feel most comfortable. By giving patients the self-service tools they want and expect, you can improve the patient experience.
Support health system and medical practice growth: New patients are key to healthcare organizations’ long-term success. With customizable patient messaging, you can send tailored emails that engage patients in their care, drive follow-up appointments, promote your organization’s ancillary services and more, helping you acquire new patients and stand out from the competition.
Increase revenue: Communicating with patients about outstanding copays and balances can feel cold and impersonal—and if your staff doesn’t feel comfortable initiating those conversations, it can lead to missed revenue. Patient engagement software automates that process by prompting patients to make a payment at the time of service, verifying their eligibility and benefits in advance and automatically collecting their financial responsibility after insurance claims have adjudicated. By automating those key steps in the payment process, patient engagement software can help you save time and collect more, faster.
Collect feedback: What do patients like about your organization? What do they dislike? If you don’t immediately know the answers to those questions, patient engagement software can help. By implementing the right patient engagement software, you can survey patients about their experience when their healthcare is top of mind, giving you real-time feedback that can highlight your organization’s strengths, inform process improvements and help you make better strategic decisions.
Measure impact: Is your patient outreach driving the results you want? Without the right tools and resources, it’s hard to be certain. But with a patient engagement platform, you can view open rates and click-through rates for every message you send—and generate reports that specify which patients are interested in the services you’re promoting.
Embrace scalability: As your organization gets bigger, you need more people to manage it. But patient engagement software accommodates practice growth at all levels, enabling you to spend the same amount of time on patient outreach even as your patient population swells. With broadcast patient messaging, for example, you could send a message to announce the hiring of a new provider to everyone at once, without drafting countless emails or printing hundreds of mailers. No matter your organization’s size, patient engagement software will scale with you.
What should I look for in patient engagement software?
It’s important to recognize that patient engagement software is not “one-size-fits-all.” Every organization’s needs are different, and yours may not look the same as your peers.
Still, there are a few key factors to consider when searching for a vendor to partner with. To find the best patient engagement software for your needs, ask yourself the following questions as you vet potential solutions:
- Does the patient engagement software allow for seamless data synchronization with my organization’s existing systems, such as our PM, EHR, HIE, data warehouse or data lake?
- Is the patient engagement software HIPAA-compliant, and does the vendor have a strong track record as it relates to privacy and security?
- Does the patient engagement vendor have one or more dedicated teams for implementation, onboarding, training and customer support?
- How does the patient engagement software support each step in the patient journey—scheduling, registration, payments, clinical support and patient activation?
- Does the patient engagement software offer custom branding and white-labeling on all patient-facing messages, forms and tools?
- Does the patient messaging functionality support multiple settings (e.g., outreach and intervisit) as well as multiple channels (email, text message, voice call, etc.)?
- Does the software vendor offer analytics and reporting tools that help you measure the performance and impact of your patient communications?
What types of healthcare organizations need patient engagement software?
Digital patient engagement software certainly makes sense for large, complex enterprises with multiple locations and service lines. But there’s no reason for small medical practices or solo providers to implement a patient engagement system—right?
In fact, small medical practices may reap even more benefits from digital patient engagement software. The ability to automate repetitive communications reduces workloads for staff, enabling small organizations to provide a comparable patient and staff experience as larger organizations.
Here are a few examples of organization types that may benefit from patient engagement software, regardless of size:
- Specialty and multispecialty groups
- Primary care organizations
- Hospitals and health systems
- FQHCs and community health centers
- EDs, acute-care offices and other ambulatory groups
Does patient engagement software integrate with my EHR?
When searching for patient engagement software, it’s crucial to find solutions that integrate with your organization’s existing systems.
Phreesia’s integrations are managed by a dedicated team skilled in HL7v2, FHIR, proprietary APIs, data extracts and more. We collaborate closely with PM and EHR vendors—as well as registration, scheduling, billing and document management systems—to build robust, responsive interfaces that help practices save time and have more meaningful patient encounters.
Our custom interfaces are designed to support unique data flows into your EHR, HIE, data warehouse or data lake, helping you save time, capture data and easily engage with patients—at scale. Click here to see if Phreesia’s patient engagement software integrates with your organization.