Health IT

Mobile health startup seeks to track patient satisfaction via text messaging

A mobile health startup wants to help providers get a better handle on patient satisfaction […]

A mobile health startup wants to help providers get a better handle on patient satisfaction and they find good reception given the advent of Accountable Care Organizations and other elements of healthcare reform.

Healthy Heartland Inc. has created CareWire, a text-messaging service by which patients can rate their satisfaction following an appointment on a scale of 0 to 10. After patients have completed their appointment, CareWire can send a text message on behalf of the provider to the patient asking that they rate their experience on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being very positive.

“Basically it is an early sensing, early warning system for healthcare providers to understand when or where and potentially why patient dissatisfaction is starting to occur in their patient population,” said Scott Danielson, Healthy Heartland’s co-founder.

If a patient texts back a low rating, CareWire’s algorithm can extrapolate information which includes the time of the visit, the type of the visit, the physician with whom the appointment was scheduled and other relevant data that can shed light on why the patient became dissatisfied.

“You can look and see what happened to Mrs. Jones at 10 a.m. that appeared to make her dissatisfied,” said co-founder David Nichols, “In contrast to other formal survey techniques, it allows you to combine great precision with near real time ability to visualize patient experience.”

The provider then can collect the data and decide whether a follow up communication is necessary with the unsatisfied patient.

An unhappy patient is undesirable not only from the point of view of reimbursement but also because it can affect the management of a patient’s care.

“Patient dissatisfaction may lead to patient disillusionment (and) reduced willingness to comply with their care protocol,” Danielson said. “There could be some fear or reluctance or unwillingness or procrastination to go for their follow up appointment or go to a specialist as recommended by their primary physician or take their medications in a timely fashion.”

CareWire is part of the first incubator class launched by Sandbox Ventures called HealthBox in Chicago. In the three month program, Danielson and Nichols hope to not only test their technology, but also determine capital requirements and customer strategy to make their venture succeed.

Danielson declined to specify which healthcare providers the company is testing its messaging service with in the first quarter, noting only that two large health systems have become customers. They will use CareWire in 10 clinics in the upper Midwest focusing on their combined  ambulatory and specialty care population of 75,000.

One of the reasons the company has been able to land paying beta customers is because of an increased focus on accountability.

“Our  beta customers are looking at this sort of innovation as being a complement to the work that their doing with Accountable Care Organizations,” Nichols said.

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