3 Healthcare Trends Driving the Need for Digital Agreements

In healthcare, the quality of the patient experience can have far-reaching implications. A positive patient experience leads to better patient outcomes, increased loyalty and higher profitability, among other benefits. The prognosis for healthcare organizations that don’t prioritize the patient experience? Let’s just say it’s bleak. According to a Black Book survey, 90 percent of patients feel no obligation to stay with a provider who does not offer a satisfactory digital experience.

Healthcare leaders often underestimate how outdated, disconnected systems and manual, paper-based processes adversely impact the quality and efficiency of patient care. In fact, without modern, digital tools and processes for getting agreements done, care teams waste an average of 30 minutes per patient during admissions, transfers, and discharges—which increases the cost of patient care by 75 percent.

Continuing to rely on manual, paper-based processes will plague patients and profitability. Patients expect digital speed and convenience in every aspect of their lives. Why should healthcare be any different? Delivering on patient expectations requires a modern system of agreement.

The Digital Agreement Imperative

A system of agreement includes all the people, processes, and technologies involved in getting agreements done. Now more than ever, a modern system of agreement is essential for successful healthcare operations.  But why now? Whether onboarding new patients, processing claims, or consenting to privacy and regulatory notices, if their systems of agreement are not fully digital, automated, and connected, healthcare organizations will be at an increasing disadvantage.

Three converging trends are driving the digital agreement imperative:

1. Patients are sick of paper: It’s no secret, and it’s pervasive in all industries. In fact, patients are just as likely to be frustrated when filling out paperwork at a doctor’s office (57%) as they would be when buying a new car (54%).

2. Agreement technology is critical to patient and organizational health: Manual, paper-based processes inherently lead to more errors and decreased productivity, leaving healthcare organizations open to greater risk and patient dissatisfaction.

3. Digital technology is needed at every step of healthcare delivery: From clinical trials and research to patient discharge, automating processes and digitizing paper forms save significant time and money.

A Landmark Clinical Trial at UCSF, Powered by a Digital Enrollment Experience

 Clinical trials present a clear example of how a seamless, digital onboarding experience can enable vastly improved results. The size of clinical trials can often be limited due to the cumbersome nature of traditional paper-based enrollment processes for a large set of patient recruits, but digital agreements are changing that.

The Athena Breast Health Network, based at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), is enrolling women into one of the largest breast cancer studies ever undertaken with the ground-breaking goal of 100,000 participants. The scope of the study and enrollment goals are possible because UCSF eliminated manual, complex paper processes with a fully digital, patient-centric recruiting experience powered by Docusign’s system of agreement platform integrated with Salesforce.

The Athena Breast Health Network and UCSF are proving how healthcare organizations can use technology to reimagine the way they interact with patients and ultimately deliver better information and outcomes.

The impact of Docusign is not just limited to clinical trials and can apply to all healthcare operations and core processes. Docusign is helping healthcare organizations improve all aspects of the patient experience to meet the expectations of their evolving patient population. With Docusign, healthcare organizations also reduce costs associated with paper agreements and develop new efficiencies that lead to better health outcomes -- all while maintaining security, privacy, and compliance.

Read more about thow Docusign and Salesforce are helping power UCSF’s groundbreaking clinical trial in The Athena Breast Health Network case study.