What is the digital front door?
Digital front door describes a set of interactive and transaction-ready capabilities to enable digital interactions between patients and health systems throughout the care journey, from pre-service to follow-up and payment. When leveraged appropriately, a digital front door strategy can improve patient experiences, drive access, and reduce (or eliminate) reliance on paper-based workflows and manual processes.
Google is the first stop for the majority of adults when they have questions about their health or need to find care. Health systems have an opportunity to show up at that exact moment and engage consumers with a powerful digital experience and convenient care options on demand."
Capability framework
Search through schedule
| Provider directory and search | View a consolidated list of providers, search and match with providers based on preferred criteria |
| Transparent information | View prices, wait times, ratings, and reviews for providers and facilities |
| Online scheduling | Directly book an appointment online without logging into a portal |
Triage, navigate, and treat
| Virtual triage | Enter symptoms online, receive a preliminary diagnosis, and be routed to a care site |
| Low-acuity care navigation | Receive education and instructions for low-acuity in-person or virtual care options |
| Virtual visits | Connect with providers for synchronous or asynchronous visits |
Consumer interactions
| Unguided interactions | Engage in self-directed interactions via portal-based or enterprise mobile apps |
| Guided interactions | Engage in guided navigation through a series of bi-directional automated or live interactions via text or chat |
The case for the digital front door
Alignment with effective digital strategy
Health systems must go beyond doing digital–that is, offering a handful of basic digital options–and be digital in order to remain competitive against convenient direct-to-consumer services. Successful long-term digital strategy requires digital front door capabilities that meet patients where they are when they begin searching for care and guide them through the entire care journey.
Better outcomes and improved patient satisfaction
A consumer-centric healthcare experience–which necessarily includes an effective digital front door strategy–bolsters trust in health systems, drives accessibility, and decreases the likelihood that patients will defer care.2 Patients who defer care are more likely to report to emergency rooms and urgent care clinics, and more than a third of patients who defer care make five or more urgent care or ED visits per year.
Direct return on investment
Consumers increasingly value convenience and cost transparency when researching care options, and are more likely to select providers with greater appointment availability and online scheduling.3 Flexible self-service options, like insurance verification and appointment check-in, continue to drive patient satisfaction throughout the care journey and motivate patients to return.
What leading digital front door solutions offer
Search through schedule
| Provider directory and search | Synchronizes with multiple data sources to provide up-to-date provider listings without duplication across sources. Search function should automatically complete terms and returns for mistyped words. |
| Transparent information | Provider reviews from multiple sources with reviews management capabilities, customizable star rating calculations, and analytics to glean insights about potential patient experience improvements. |
| Online scheduling | Multi-lingual and consumer-friendly, with scheduling enabled directly from provider pages and new patient scheduling options that do not require logging into a portal. EHR-agnostic to create a consistent consumer experience, and call center-enabled. |
Triage, navigate, and treat
| Virtual triage | Multi-lingual and omni-channel with the ability to integrate symptom checking functionality into a general chatbot solution. A strong consumer experience should include SEO from non-branded web searches, with capabilities to patients, pass data into the EHR, and integrate with appropriate endpoints. |
| Low-acuity care navigation | Aggregates inventory of on-demand care options, transitions seamlessly between modes of care, leverages virtual provider pools to manage resources based on demand, leverages ancillary services, and integrates with other digital front door capabilities. |
| Virtual visits | Synchronous and asynchronous virtual visit solutions are multilingual, accessible, and omnichannel; and allow users to alternate between modalities. Capabilities should integrate with existing provider workflows and auto-generate clinical documentation, offer real-time benefits information and auto-generate claims, directly enable orders for ancillary services, and automate follow-ups and referrals. |
Consumer interactions
| Unguided interactions | Includes geolocation capabilities to assist with resource navigation, enables self-service transactions, aggregates care options and provides price transparency, and supports consumers with personalized care management and engagement. |
| Guided interactions | Guided consumer interactions should include automated or live bidirectional text and chat conversations that are free text enabled and allow users to find providers, schedule or cancel appointments, review real-time health information, and start synchronous virtual visits. |
Starting the digital front door journey
An effective digital front door strategy amounts to more than just a set of digital applications–it’s a way to engage with patients from their very first search engine query and provide convenient, cost-effective, personalized care. Success depends on health systems articulating clear priorities for these crucial first steps and an enterprise-level commitment to meaningful digital transformation.
- Pulse check. Consult with key stakeholders across the health system to understand the existing state of digital front door capabilities, solicit feedback about priority areas, and ensure that senior leadership, clinician, and staff are aligned.
- High-level tech inventory and capability assessment. Upgrade or consolidate technical infrastructure and hardware as needed.
- Opportunity analysis and third party recommendations. Identify highest priority opportunities and potential use cases, and seek unbiased third-party information about available solutions and tailored recommendations for your organization.
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1 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0033354919874074
2 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/driving-growth-through-consumer-centricity-in-healthcare
3 https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/the-expansion-of-the-digital-front-door-and-what-it-means-for-health-care-organizations
