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Patient Intake Management 2020
Helping Clinics Keep Their Doors Open During COVID-19
Author
Aaron Gleave
Author
Alex McIntosh
Patient intake is a critical part of any ambulatory practice. In the era of COVID-19, technology solutions in this area have become more important than ever to help maintain social distancing protocols, screen patients for self-reported COVID-19 risk factors and symptoms, reduce patient/staff contact, and give patients a safe, convenient experience. Patient intake management solutions have continually evolved to meet organizations’ needs, with many new vendors gaining market share and more longstanding vendors expanding on the functionalities they offer.
Most vendors in this space deliver a solid experience to customers, with one exception. CareCloud customers are highly dissatisfied, and the vendor falls significantly behind the rest of the market in every metric. For more on CareCloud, see details below.
Patient Intake Technologies Helping Providers through COVID-19—Phreesia, Epic, Epion Leading the Way
Provider organizations using Phreesia say the vendor has stepped up their technology by inserting COVID-19 screening questions into pre-check-in forms. Additionally, respondents remark on Phreesia’s ability to allow patients to complete forms and questionnaires through a link sent to their mobile device, facilitating a contactless check-in experience.
Users of the Epic solution (used only by Epic EMR customers) and Epion Health solution (used only by athenahealth EMR customers) report positive feedback regarding the vendors’ support during the pandemic. Epic respondents report receiving near-daily product updates with new COVID-related functionality that gives patients greater self-service capabilities for check-in and payment processes. Epion Health has increased communication in order to ensure customers are aware of and quickly implement COVID-related enhancements. Notably, customers of all three vendors highlighted above say they have not been charged extra for new COVID-related functionality.
Phreesia Delivers a Strong Product and Broad Functionality
Interviewed Phreesia customers have the broadest, deepest functionality adoption (8–9 functionalities on average). Customers also credit Phreesia for being innovative and responsive to requests for enhancements or updates that increase patient throughput. The product is described as extremely user friendly and intuitive; patients can easily navigate it with minimal help from office staff. At the time this data was collected, AdvancedMD offered an EMR-agnostic patient intake solution, but they have recently decided to no longer promote AdvancedPatient separately from the AdvancedMD EMR offering. Overall, the solution is high performing, and customers have adopted an above average number of functionalities (6 on average). AdvancedPatient users feel AdvancedMD is evolving the product and consistently releases new technology that increases efficiency. Product quality, previously an area of weakness, has improved significantly, and respondents are enthusiastic about features the vendor has promised to develop in the future.
Phreesia and Epion Climb in Customer Satisfaction; CareCloud and OTech Fall
In the last two years, Phreesia and Epion Health customers have seen noticeable satisfaction improvement. Phreesia respondents say the vendor has continued to innovate and deliver new technology that is relevant and useful to their practices while also working to improve customer relationships. Epion Health customers note the strong integration with the athenahealth platform—today, more than 90% of Epion customers report high satisfaction with the platform’s support of their integration goals. Respondents are also highly satisfied with product improvements, which have driven tangible outcomes. AdvancedMD has the biggest one-year increase in overall score, though notably most respondents are not AdvancedMD EMR customers, and as noted above, AdvancedPatient will now be marketed only to EMR customers.
Feedback from the limited sample of CareCloud customers indicates their already low satisfaction has declined even further in the past two years, especially since the company was acquired by MTBC. Most respondents are experiencing buyer’s remorse, citing major product gaps and unkept promises about updates and fixes (e.g., patients must enter the same information at each visit, and some respondents cannot send collected information to the EMR or PM system). OTech Group clients are the second least satisfied customer base in this report (though much more satisfied than CareCloud customers). Satisfaction has declined significantly since 2018; respondents report implementation problems and say OTech has not delivered product updates.
Epion, Phreesia, and OTech Stand Out for Increasing Office Efficiency
Epion Health customers praise the solution for helping them eliminate paper and increase efficiency by allowing patients to do everything from scanning insurance cards, to signing forms, to answering questionnaires—tasks previously handled by office staff or medical assistants.
Provider organizations using Phreesia describe the solution as “eye-opening” when it comes to opportunities for efficiency gains. The system has allowed front-office staff to focus on improving the patient experience and on communicating directly with patients. Customers also appreciate the system’s ability to inform patients of expected co-pays and deductibles before they arrive for an appointment. OTech Group’s technology has eliminated the need to scan forms into PM or EMR systems, saving office staff time. Additionally, organizations report increased collection of patient payments through the use of the OTech solution; however, several respondents feel the vendor’s fees for various modules and functionalities are too steep, hurting perceptions of overall value.
A Market Warning: CareCloud Failing to Meet Customer Expectations
CareCloud Breeze consistently and significantly underperforms—this feedback comes from a limited sample but is highly consistent, with more than three-quarters of the comments about CareCloud and their solution being negative. Users feel that although the product is visually appealing, it is missing many basic functionalities found in other solutions, causing one clinic owner to describe it as “a fancy paperweight.” Organizations complain that the solution only works for new patients (not returning patients) and say CareCloud oversold its capabilities. Organizations are also frustrated that instead of helping them through the COVID-19 crisis, CareCloud tried to upsell them on additional functionalities, such as telehealth, that ultimately didn’t meet their needs. Since the acquisition by MTBC, customer support has declined considerably, with many current customers complaining that it is now “impossible” to get in touch with the vendor’s support team.
About This Report
Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT products and services their organizations use. These interviews are conducted using a standard quantitative evaluation, and the scores and commentary collected are shared online in real time so that other providers and IT professionals can benefit from their peers’ experiences. To enable readers to more quickly understand high-level differences in vendor performance and give better context as to how each product compares to other offerings in the market, KLAS has organized the questions from the standard evaluation into six customer experience pillars—culture, loyalty, operations, product, relationship, and value.
To supplement the data gathered with this standard evaluation, KLAS also creates various supplemental evaluations that target a subset of KLAS’ overall sampling and delve deeper into the most pressing questions facing healthcare technology today.
The data in this report comes from both evaluation types and was collected over the last 12 months; the number of unique responding organizations for each is given in the chart below.
† Epic Welcome users leverage a number of Epic products (in addition to Welcome) that work in tandem to enable certain patient intake management capabilities.
Note: Some organizations may have rated more than one product.
What Does "Limited Data" Mean?
Some products are used in only a small number of facilities, some vendors are resistant to providing client lists, and some respondents choose not to answer particular questions. Thus a vendor’s sample size may vary from question to question and may not reach KLAS’ required threshold of 15 unique respondents. When a vendor’s sample size for a particular question is less than 15, the score for that question is marked with an asterisk (*) or otherwise designated as “limited data.” If the sample size is less than 6, no score is shown.
Note that when a vendor has a low number of reporting sites, the possibility exists for KLAS scores to change significantly as new surveys are collected.
Overall scores are measured on a 100-point scale and represent the weighted average of several yes/no questions as well as other questions scored on a 9-point scale.
Product Designations Used in This Report
- Component [C]: Product that typically includes most but not all components that comprise a complete system or that serves only a subset of the market. In the case of patient intake management solutions, this typically means that the solution is compatible with only one EMR or PM solution. Epic Welcome is compatible only with the Epic EMR. Epion Health’s solution is compatible only with the athenahealth EMR. AdvancedMD’s solution, while currently capable of integrating with a variety of EMRs, will no longer be sold outside the AdvancedMD EMR customer base in the future.
Writer
Amanda Wind
Designer
Madison Moniz
Project Manager
Natalie Jamison
This material is copyrighted. Any organization gaining unauthorized access to this report will be liable to compensate KLAS for the full retail price. Please see the KLAS DATA USE POLICY for information regarding use of this report. © 2024 KLAS Research, LLC. All Rights Reserved. NOTE: Performance scores may change significantly when including newly interviewed provider organizations, especially when added to a smaller sample size like in emerging markets with a small number of live clients. The findings presented are not meant to be conclusive data for an entire client base.