For many years, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) has been the spine of the healthcare tech stack. And that’s for good purpose. The digitization that EHRs present has remodeled how hospitals and well being techniques work together with medical knowledge, in addition to how they speak to sufferers.
However the EHR isn’t a monolith. In 2025, we discover ourselves in a healthcare surroundings that places new worth on affected person centricity and value-based care. As healthcare leaders proceed to adapt, they proceed to acknowledge a stark actuality: the central EHR merely can’t accommodate the wants of a digitally native affected person inhabitants.
Whereas EHRs excel at capturing medical knowledge, they lag in terms of patient-centric communication. Gaps in well timed, clear, and actionable info may cause sufferers to really feel as if they’re passive recipients of their care, spectators relatively than contributors. What’s extra, the downstream influence could be appreciable and pervasive, starting from decrease affected person engagement and poor adherence to care plans to greater readmission charges and worse well being outcomes.
In the meantime, care groups are overwhelmed. Docs and nurses are typically spending extra time interacting with a pc display screen than with their sufferers. In actual fact, in a single recent study, main care physicians have been spending a median of 36 minutes on the EHR for each 30-minute appointment. The extra time docs spend charting, the much less time they should successfully talk with sufferers and make them really feel really concerned in their very own care.
The excellent news? Healthcare leaders don’t have to ditch the EHR—and even overhaul a lot of something—to resolve this downside. As an alternative, they simply want to make sure that they’ve a sturdy communication and engagement layer that sits atop their techniques of report. Main hospitals and healthcare techniques have appeared to reinforce EHRs with dynamic and devoted affected person communications options that fill vital communication gaps, making healthcare extra accessible, proactive, and patient-driven.
Enhancing EHRs with Affected person Communications Options
Placing sufferers on the heart of their care means placing them in management. And that comes via simple, always-on entry to info, in addition to proactive outreach that occurs on the proper second within the affected person journey. It comes via affected person communication packages which are rapid, customized, and actionable:
- Automated, proactive, and customized outreach: Each affected person is exclusive. They’ve a singular well being profile, a singular set of demographic circumstances, and, importantly, their very own set of distinctive, private preferences. A sturdy affected person communication layer that’s totally built-in to techniques of report can ship tailor-made messages based mostly on a affected person’s situation, therapy plan, and communication preferences—on the precise proper second within the affected person journey. That signifies that sufferers get the suitable reminders, pre-visit directions, and follow-up care plans based mostly on their distinctive well being wants, with out guide intervention from frontline workers.
- Multi-channel accessibility: Not each affected person checks their e mail. Not each affected person is snug navigating a portal. Efficient affected person engagement meets folks the place they’re. By leveraging the channels that sufferers use—whether or not that’s SMS, telephone calls, emails, or internet survey—healthcare suppliers can higher be certain that vital info reaches its goal.
- Two-way, real-time communication: Conventional EHR workflows usually deal with affected person communication as a one-way road—info is recorded, however not often used for real-time, interactive engagement. Dynamic communications—and critically, self-service choices—flip this dynamic, placing extra energy in sufferers’ fingers. When sufferers are in higher management, they’re higher in a position to affirm appointments, report considerations, ask follow-up questions, and obtain well timed responses from their care groups, with out even having to attend for his or her healthcare supplier to provoke the interplay. When sufferers really feel heard, they’re extra prone to keep engaged.
Why Higher Affected person Communication is an Operational Crucial
On the finish of the day, an engaged affected person is a more healthy affected person. A raft of studies has proven the influence of efficient affected person communication in empowering sufferers who usually tend to adjust to care plans, extra prone to get well timed screenings, much less prone to be readmitted, and fewer prone to interact in unhealthy behaviors. Advantages embrace:
- Higher affected person outcomes: Lowered readmissions: Proactive outreach and follow-up communications guarantee sufferers adhere to care plans, keep away from pointless visits to the hospital, and have a channel to interact ought to a complication come up.
- Enhanced supplier effectivity: By automating routine communications, engagement platforms scale back the executive workload for clinicians, permitting them to give attention to high-value affected person interactions.
- Increased affected person satisfaction: When sufferers really feel knowledgeable and supported all through their care journey, they report higher satisfaction with their healthcare expertise, fostering long-term loyalty.
How a Communication Layer Basically Improves the EHR
This isn’t nearly bridging the EHR communication hole. In actuality, patient-centered communications assist make EHRs higher, extra helpful, extra actionable, extra knowledgeable with real-time knowledge, and extra aligned with a contemporary set of healthcare wants.
Crucially, affected person communications is an important supply of knowledge. A lot of the data that impacts a affected person’s well being exists exterior of their medical report and out of doors of the 4 partitions of the hospital. Affected person communications can seize essential contextual and conversational knowledge factors about how sufferers are feeling post-discharge, whether or not they’re adhering to medicines, and even what sort of meals they dislike or if they’ve any preferences about hospital room stays. A affected person engagement layer captures this real-world knowledge and feeds it again into the EHR, offering care groups with a extra full and actionable affected person report, whereas enabling personalization down the highway.
The Way forward for Affected person Engagement Begins Right here
EHRs have been by no means constructed for real-time affected person engagement. As healthcare shifts towards a extra patient-centered mannequin, hospitals should transcend the affected person report. They have to allow proactive, customized communication. A devoted communication layer does extra than simply fill gaps. It makes the EHR extra actionable, improves outcomes, reduces supplier burdens, and strengthens affected person relationships. The way forward for healthcare hinges upon connection—and upon delivering the suitable info, on the proper time, in the suitable approach.
About Suzie Sfarra
Suzie Sfarra brings over 15 years of product management to her function as Chief Product Officer at CipherHealth, with a confirmed observe report of driving innovation and scaling B2B SaaS options. On this function, she is instrumental in shaping product methods that contribute to income development, operational excellence, and enhanced buyer engagement. Suzie will proceed to determine alternatives to develop AI-driven capabilities and foster strategic partnerships that improve affected person care and engagement throughout CipherHealth’s portfolio.
Previous to becoming a member of CipherHealth, Suzie held management roles at Achieve Concept and CBORD, the place she accelerated product supply and expanded market management via revolutionary options and strategic roadmap execution. Suzie’s expertise contains aligning digital options with healthcare techniques’ strategic priorities to enhance affected person care and operational workflows inside enterprise well being techniques.
