The Cost of Not Prioritizing Digital Experience and Portal Security

When healthcare provider organizations think of digital experience, they may think of the patient digital experience on their portal. Your organization needs to look at the whole digital experience, including knowing who is entering your digital front door. Some identity verification and authentication tools can meet the patient portal security requirements and create a desirable patient experience.  

Patient Digital Experience Expectations 

Healthcare consumers have come a long way in expectations. Anyone that didn’t use a computer before the pandemic probably did during the pandemic. The average healthcare consumer is more tech savvy today than they have been in the past. They have high expectations. 88% of online users will abandon site after a bad experience.¹ Supporting this point is an Accenture study that found 52% of healthcare consumers agreed that a bad digital experience with a provider ruins the entire experience with that provider.² 

Offering a great digital experience takes resources. Like any business, your organization must justify the cost of a great digital experience. Several studies have found that patient portals contribute to patient engagement, meaning being invested in their own healthcare. Specific measures are monitoring health status, improved patient-doctor interaction and improved quality of care.³ These results lead to better health outcomes like medication adherence. Patients and provider organizations want better outcomes – both benefit. A great digital experience impacts health outcomes and helps patients live a healthier life.  

But digital experience does cost and it is complicated by the need for security. Healthcare organizations want a secure portal, because consequences can be serious. They must safeguard against a data breach. It’s tempting to use authentication to secure patient portals which causes a lot of user friction and possible site abandonment. Today, identity verification solutions can help you find the balance between a great digital experience and security. When considering cost of a secure portal, it’s important to realize that preventive measures can cost as little as pennies per consumer per year.⁴ 

The Cost of Not Prioritizing Digital Experience 

It's generally accepted that a healthcare digital experience impacts efficiencies and patient engagement. Something to consider is how much it costs to not make digital experience a priority. 

The average time required to identity and contain a data breach takes 277 day, causing operational disruption and additional costs.⁵ The healthcare industry ranked the highest in cost of a data breach at $10.93M.⁶  

There are many costs to not prioritizing the patient digital experience. Consider the number of administrative tasks you can funnel through your patient portal. For example, a patient can access lab reports without other human intervention. One less call center call. Patient satisfaction is another area that can suffer if you don’t offer a good digital experience. This can impact costs by increasing telephone calls. A bad digital experience can surprisingly cause you to lose patients. And it costs more to acquire new patients than to retain the ones you have.  

There are many reasons to prioritize the digital experience. Read this e-book to learn more about the costs of not prioritizing it. You can use the ROI calculator inside to get an idea of costs and benefits. 

 

References:

1. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/website-statistics/#:~:text=Forty%20percent%20of%20internet%20users,and%20loss%20of%20potential%20customers.
2. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/health/leaders-make-recent-digital-health-gains-last
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8459217/
4. Based on the cost of LexisNexis® Risk Solutions products.
5. https://www.ibm.com/account/reg/us-en/signup?formid=urx-52258
6. https://www.ibm.com/account/reg/us-en/signup?formid=urx-52258