Preventative health care, such as regularly scheduled immunizations and screenings, can dramatically improve patient health and outcomes. But proactively engaging with patients to ensure they can access and take advantage of preventative and ongoing care can be challenging, and even getting patients to schedule follow-ups and treatment for chronic conditions isn’t as easy or effective as it should be.

Even as payers move to a value-based care model that emphasizes outcomes, providers and systems can struggle to close care gaps and engage patients in ongoing treatment and regularly scheduled services. The recent pandemic exacerbated the challenge, with four in 10 U.S. adults reporting that they avoided care because of concerns related to COVID-19.¹

Whether it’s failing to see patients for annual physicals and screenings, missed or delayed diagnosis due to delayed care or chronic conditions that go untreated until they become acute medical issues, gaps in care can have serious health and financial consequences for both patients and providers, who lose revenue from postponed or ignored services.

Four in 10 US adults reported avoiding care because of concerns related to COVID-19.¹

Traditional methods of patient outreach don’t address gaps in care

Often, it’s up to patients to remember when to schedule appointments or how to stay on a care path; this can lead to putting off vital care and follow-up. In fact, according to one study, only 8% of U.S. adults attain all guideline-recommended healthcare services.²

There are several reasons why patients put off or ignore the need for care, including:

• Scheduling appointments can be time consuming and frustrating.
• Keeping track of recommended visits is difficult.
• Managing ongoing treatment plans can be burdensome once patients leave the office.

Unfortunately, overwhelmed providers and systems don’t have the resources necessary to ensure that every patient who is due for an annual checkup, immunization, screening or follow-up care is proactively contacted and scheduled for an appointment. And even if resources are made available, time constraints mean that healthcare providers are often forced to select which preventive or follow-up services will be included in patient outreach. The reality is that contacting each and every patient is not scalable with manually intensive processes—and that means that patient care can suffer.

The process of determining which patients to contact for post-discharge follow-up, and then calling each and every one of them, diverts valuable trained staff from essential activities.

Automated outreach: Close the gap while improving care and the bottom line

With virtual agents, such as Gridspace Grace, you can close the gap in care by automating outreach to all patients in need of engagement—conveniently and cost effectively. By giving providers and healthcare systems a timely, easy way to remind patients of screening and treatment needs, and then schedule services on the spot, Grace enables you to:

• Perform outreach to 100% of patients in need of engagement.
• Improve patient care and the patient experience.
• Free up clinical and administrative staff to focus on patient care.
• Capture additional service line revenue.

As the most advanced, natural-sounding virtual agent, Grace can handle customer interactions in a natural and friendly manner while scaling immediately and elastically to meet outreach demands and tag teaming high-value resources when needed. With Gridspace Grace, providers and systems can close the care gap, improve patient access to healthcare and drive revenue for multiple lines of service.

Listen to Grace perform patient outreach for care appointments here, and discover how Gridspace is pioneering real-time speech infrastructure for healthcare.

According to one study, only 8% of U.S. adults attain all guideline-recommended healthcare services.²

¹ Czeisler ME, Marynak K, Clarke KEN, et al., Delay or Avoidance in Medical Care Because of COVID-19, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, June 2020.

² Zhang JJ, Rothberg MB, Misra-Hebert AD, et al., Assessment of Physician Priorities in Delivery of Preventive Care, JAMA Network Open, July 2020.