Survey: Patients Need Continued Engagement with Providers Outside of the Doctor’s Office

// By Althea Fung //

A recent survey found that half of the respondents get most of their COVID-19 information from media reports. About a third of respondents believe that no one has provided clear information consistently about COVID-19.

Patient engagement is a critical piece of patient care. Studies have linked patient engagement with improved health outcomes, lower costs, and higher ratings on patient experience surveys. But a new survey from Actium Health, a CRM Intelligence and patient activation platform, found that consumers increasingly expect more from their doctors while also feeling less confident about their providers.

The annual survey of healthcare consumers conducted online in February 2022 found that most consumers (63 percent) expect more from their doctors. That’s up from 50.2 percent in 2021. At the same time, a little over 50 percent of survey respondents expressed feeling less confident in their doctors, which is also up nine percentage points from last year’s survey.

Mike Linnert, founder and CEO of Actium Health

“I think people are confident in their providers at the moment that they’re sitting in front of them,” says Mike Linnert, founder and CEO of Actium Health. “Where people tend to drift away is the 99 percent of the time that [they are] not in front of the doctor or not in the midst of an episode or recovery.”

Linnert says consumers increasingly turn to less reliable sources of medical information like Dr. Google or friends in those times: “That’s what we think is the real opportunity for health systems and providers to think proactively about how to connect with patients — in between episodes of care.”

Linnert says that seizing the opportunity to connect with patients proactively can help reduce medical misinformation and connect patients to appropriate care.

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