How Rural Healthcare Organizations Improve Connections with Patients

Many of these are cloud-based solutions that are capable of analyzing relevant patient data to tailor communications appropriately, Rowland says. “Let’s say you have a patient who is due for a mammogram or maybe needs a flu shot. An embedded system can help the provider recognize that and message the patient to schedule an appointment,” he adds.

Streamlining patient engagement was the goal when Mammoth Hospital turned to Oracle Health’s Unified Consumer Communications in 2022. Located in California’s Sierra Nevada, the hospital struggled with high no-show rates and had trouble communicating with patients during the mountain region’s frequent weather emergencies.

“Around here, we measure snow in feet,” says Zack Brown, Mammoth Hospital’s director of outpatient clinics and community engagement. With bidirectional text messaging offered through the UCC solution, patients can still be reached when storms occur.

“We can text them to tell them we’re closing early or to see if they’re going to make it to their appointment on time, and they can respond immediately to reschedule if needed,” Brown says.

The platform also includes appointment reminder functionality that’s helped Mammoth Hospital cut its no-show rate in half. An SMS-campaign feature allows the organization to message multiple patients at once.

“We can stratify patients with our EHR based on factors such as insurance plan or shared health conditions, and then we can dump that into UCC and send out a mass text,” Brown says. Communicating this way can be better for patients because they can respond when it’s convenient for them, including during off-hours.

“In my opinion, the top driver for healthcare outcomes is access. We’re improving access by giving patients another avenue to connect with us,” Brown adds.

READ MORE: Get the most out of your electronic health record.

Remote Patient Monitoring Helps in Chronic Disease Management

The University of Mississippi Medical Center also wanted to improve patient access to care when it launched the UMMC Center for Telehealth more than two decades ago. The Jackson, Miss.-based organization relies on telehealth tools to care for patients in rural and underserved communities in each of the state’s 82 counties.

“As an academic medical center, we’re not in the business of putting up hospitals,” says Tearsanee Carlisle Davis, the center’s director of clinical programs and strategy. Telehealth allows UMMC to reach patients who would otherwise have to travel for specialty care, and it helps support local providers who don’t have the the medical center’s resources.