With nurses and doctors working at full speed to stabilize hospital patients and clear beds, giving patients detailed information about their conditions and recovery is often put on the backburner. To make matters worse, patients don’t always absorb all the information given by healthcare staff and can easily forget critical details.
A survey of 90,000 hospital patients from the Canadian Institute for Health Information reveals that one in three discharged patients don’t feel that they’ve been adequately informed about their conditions, treatment plans or medications.
Unfortunately, this overwhelming lack of information and confidence around patients’ health can lead to higher hospital readmission rates.
“Over a quarter of all heart surgery patients[, for instance,] are readmitted to hospitals across Canada with post-operative complications experienced during the first [three] months of recovery,” reads a medical study from Ryerson University. “This may be due to the quality of existing patient education intervention.”
To improve patient education around their hospital visits, there’s a surprisingly simple solution that won’t aggravate overworked nurses or doctors. Your hospital can adopt interactive technologies designed to thoroughly educate patients, building their confidence and lowering readmission rates.
How Advanced Technology Can Better Educate Hospital Patients
The most effective form of patient care at a hospital doesn’t just take place when a nurse or doctor actively treats or consults with a person. In fact, patients require additional information before, during and after their hospital visits.
Yet, healthcare staff often don’t have the time to brief patients on every important piece of information relevant to their condition or call to check on them after being discharged.
So whether patients need to be prepared for an upcoming procedure, understand the importance of their medications or get an in-depth plan for home recovery, they can benefit greatly from self-serve educational technologies.
Hospitals that embrace digital education platforms — which offer patients access to personalized care plans and learning resources — can create superior information exchanges between doctors, nurses, caregivers, patients and their loved ones.
Consider investing in a mobile application that patients can access within and outside of hospital facilities. That way, they can view information specific to their diagnoses, conditions and health plans at any point in time and as often as needed.
By investing in smarter educational technologies, healthcare staff can prepare patients to heal faster, be more satisfied with their care, and, ultimately, reduce their likelihood of being readmitted. Not to mention that providing patients with critical information can lower anxiety around their procedures, medication and overall health — preventing patients from becoming hostile or disruptive toward staff.
Equip Your Hospital With the Most Effective Tech for Patient Education
It’s easy to brainstorm all the types of engaging, educational technologies that can benefit your hospital’s staff and patients — the hard part is picking an experienced vendor that can offer your hospital intuitive solutions to short-term and long-term patient challenges.
That’s why Canadian hospitals have adopted PX Solutions-powered patient engagement solutions from Get Well.
By opting for Get Well technology, hospitals can anticipate the unique needs of their patients and deliver easy-to-use learning tools, reminders and custom information during and beyond their hospital visits.
Get Well Inpatient, for example, gives healthcare staff the ability to direct in-depth instructions, informative videos, automated check-ins and follow-up questions to a patient or caregiver inside and outside of the hospital. This solution also offers staff a wealth of patient insights, which your team can use to further improve and personalize future education plans.
With Get Well, hospitals have seen their 90-day readmission rates decrease by 25% and patient complication rates drop by 54%. After all, investing in superior patient education technologies allows hospitals to give patients the extra support and reminders they need to heal without taking time from nurses and doctors.
Learn more about how you can boost results for your hospital with smart patient technology by connecting with a PX Solutions representative here.