HCS 490 Week 3 Effective Consumer Access and Communication Example

Where Consumers Actually Start: Online Search, Portals and the Phone, and a Communication Plan That Meets Health Care Consumers on Each Channel

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

HCS/490: Health Care Consumer - Trends and Marketing

Week 3 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The health system, its channels and its figures are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

A woman with a new cough that will not go away does not begin by calling a clinic. She types her symptoms into a search engine, reads a few articles, checks her insurer's website to see which clinics are in network, looks at reviews and only then tries to book an appointment online. If that fails, she calls. Every step is a point where a health care organization can make access easier or harder. This paper analyzes how consumers seek access and information and proposes a communication plan for a composite regional health system with five hospitals and 70 clinics.

Where Consumers Begin: Online Sources

Laukka et al. (2019) reviewed research on consumer-led health-related online sources, such as websites, forums and apps, and their impact on consumers. They found that online sources can increase consumers' knowledge, help them take part in decisions and change how they interact with health professionals, while also raising concerns about the quality of information and how consumers interpret it. For a health system, this means its first contact with many consumers happens on a search results page, and the information it publishes competes with everything else online.

The Website and Online Scheduling

The health system's website should answer the questions consumers bring from search: which locations treat this problem, whether the system accepts their insurance, how soon they can be seen and what it will cost. Online scheduling that shows real open times for primary care and common specialties turns a search into an appointment. Pages about common conditions should be written in plain language, reviewed by clinicians and dated, so consumers can judge their currency.

Reviews and Reputation

Before booking, many consumers read online reviews of physicians and clinics. The health system cannot control what people write, but it can respond. The plan assigns a patient experience coordinator to read reviews weekly, reply to negative reviews with an invitation to call, without discussing any patient's care in public, and pass recurring complaints, such as parking or wait times, to the relevant managers. Posting the system's own patient survey results for each physician gives consumers a larger, more balanced sample than a handful of reviews.

Telehealth as an Access Channel

Video and phone visits have become a routine way in for follow-up care, medication checks and behavioral health. For consumers who work hourly jobs or live far from a clinic, a telehealth visit can be the difference between care and no care. The plan offers a video visit option whenever the clinician agrees it is appropriate, a phone-only option for consumers without reliable internet and a short test call before a first video visit.

The Patient Portal

After the first visit, much communication moves to the patient portal: test results, messages, refills and scheduling. Irizarry et al. (2015) reviewed research on patient portals and engagement and found that portals can support engagement, but that use varies, with lower adoption among older adults, people with lower health literacy and some minority groups, and that design, training and clinician encouragement influence whether patients use them. A portal that serves only the patients who were already most engaged can widen the very gaps in access that the health system wants to close.

The plan sets three portal standards: no message waits more than one business day for a first response, which may simply name who will answer and by when; test results appear with a plain-language explanation or a note that the clinician will call; and front desk staff offer help signing up at every visit, with a paper guide and a video in English and Spanish.

The Phone as a Safety Net

Many consumers, especially older adults and people with limited internet access, still rely on the phone. The health system's central line averages a four-minute hold time and a 12% abandonment rate at peak hours. The plan adds staff during the morning peak, offers a call-back option instead of holding and trains call center staff to complete scheduling, billing questions and prescription requests on one call. The phone is treated as a channel with its own standards, not as the place consumers end up when digital tools fail.

Speaking So Consumers Understand

All channels depend on plain language. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2024) recommends what it calls health literacy universal precautions, which start from the assumption that any patient may struggle with health information and so build every conversation and document to be understood by all, with tools such as teach-back and simple written instructions. The plan requires that patient-facing letters, bills and web pages be written so that most adults can read them easily, with short sentences and everyday words, tested with patients and offered in the system's most common languages.

Connecting the Channels

Consumers should not have to repeat themselves. When a consumer starts scheduling online and calls for help, the call center should see the attempt. When a portal message raises a billing question, it should reach billing without the consumer resending it. The plan links the scheduling system, portal and call center records so staff can see recent contacts.

Measures

Measures include the share of appointments booked online and completed without a phone call, portal reply time, portal enrollment by age group and language, call abandonment and hold times, patient ratings of how easy it was to get an appointment and readability scores of revised materials. Results will be reported by age, language and payer so that gaps are visible. A quarterly review will compare the measures across the five hospitals and 70 clinics, so that locations with slow replies or long holds can learn from the best performers.

Conclusion

Consumers begin with a search, move through websites and portals and fall back on the phone. Each channel can open or close access. A plan that publishes useful information, lets consumers book online, answers portal messages promptly, keeps the phone strong, speaks plainly and connects every channel meets consumers where they are rather than where the organization would prefer them to be.

References

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2024). Health literacy universal precautions toolkit (3rd ed.). https://www.ahrq.gov/health-literacy/improve/precautions/index.html

Irizarry, T., DeVito Dabbs, A., & Curran, C. R. (2015). Patient portals and patient engagement: A state of the science review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 17(6), Article e148. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.4255

Laukka, E., Rantakokko, P., & Suhonen, M. (2019). Consumer-led health-related online sources and their impact on consumers: An integrative review of the literature. Health Informatics Journal, 25(2), 247-266. https://doi.org/10.1177/1460458217704254