Becker's Hospital Review

50 INNOVATION Hospitals are failing to meet consumers' digital expectations, Kaufman Hall says By Jackie Drees W hile hospitals and health systems have improved their basic con- sumer-centric capabilities since 2019, they are not yet fully committing to the digital and consumer-centered transforma- tion needed to meet consumers' care expec- tations, according to a Kaufman Hall report. For its Kaufman Hall 2020 Healthcare Consumerism Survey, the healthcare con- sulting firm surveyed more than 110 hos- pital and health system executives from across the U.S. The participants repre- sent more than 100 community hospitals, health systems, academic medical centers, rural providers, pediatric hospitals and re- habilitation hospitals, according to a Sept. 8 news release. Kaufman Hall developed the Kaufman Hall Healthcare Consumerism Index based on the survey responses to show how healthcare organizations are performing across the in- dustry in relation to consumerism. Seven report insights: 1. Only 7 percent of organizations performed in the first tier of the Kaufman Hall Health- care Consumerism Index, indicating that they have a dedicated focus and resources for building a consumer-centric infrastructure. 2. Most hospitals and health systems were ei- ther in Tier 2 or Tier 3 of the index, with the second describing having a thoughtful ap- proach to becoming more consumer-centric and investing in systemwide initiatives and the third indicating they have started target- ing specific consumer-oriented strategies but are not yet building an infrastructure. 3. e remaining participants (7 percent) fell in Tier 4, which indicates that they are not working on consumer-centric strategies needed to meet evolving expectations. 4. Participants are also increasingly con- cerned with health insurance, retail and tech- nology competition, with 76 percent of sur- vey participants citing UnitedHealth/Optum as a strong or extreme competitive threat. 5. While most hospitals and health systems offer telehealth and walk-in clinics at 90 per- cent and 73 percent, respectively, only 37 percent offer in-home monitoring and just 22 percent offer home-based primary care. 6. Hospitals' strategies for consumer-centric care are not always translating to improved capabilities. For example, while 66 percent of participants said they place a high or extreme priority on redesigning and ex- panding digital capabilities and physical fa- cilities, only 11 percent are best in class for providing those services. 7. e most common pricing transparency offerings for consumers are online price es- timators (63 percent) and online forms for receiving out-of-pocket cost estimates (63 percent), followed by staff answering price questions in person (49 percent) and offer- ing out-of-price guarantees for select ser- vices (23 percent). n Amazon vs. Apple vs. Google vs. Microsoft: Which voice assistant is most effective for health screenings? By Jackie Drees A s providers look to further integrate voice assistants into clinical care, some options are more effective at answering patients' que- ries than others, according to a study published Sept. 1 in the An- nals of Family Medicine. For the study, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Healthcare researchers analyzed four major voice assistants' ability to understand queries from cancer patients. The four voice assistants were Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana. The research team used their personal smartphones for the analysis, in which they asked each voice assistant the following question, twice, for 11 cancer types: "Should I get screened for (type of) cancer?" The research- ers then assessed each voice assistant's ability to understand the queries, provide accurate information through web searches and verbally convey the information. The voice assistants' responses were compared to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's cancer screening guidelines; responses were considered accu- rate if they did not directly contradict the guidance. Four study insights: 1. Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana understood 100 percent of the queries and consistently provided a web search and/or verbal response. Alexa was unable to understand or respond to any of the queries. 2. The top three web links recommended by Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana provided information that matched the task force's guidelines about 70 percent of the time. 3. For verbal response accuracy, Google Assistant aligned with the task force's guidelines 64 percent of the time, which was similar to its accuracy rate of web searches. Cortana's accuracy of 45 percent was lower than its web searches, and Siri was unable to provide a verbal response to any of the queries. 4. All voice assistants' verbal responses to queries were either unavailable or less accurate than those generated by manual web searches. n

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