How can direct care physicians use video to engage patients?

Communicating with patients is critical for ensuring they understand their diagnosis and follow-up care thoroughly. Often, patients will have questions or will not remember the details of their conversation once they leave the physician’s office. At other times, it may be necessary for the direct care physician to provide the same information to multiple patients. Engaging those patients with video may be the best solution, to ensure the information is properly disseminated and retained.

In the direct care physician’s office, patients may indicate they understand instructions or explanations. However, once they return home they may realize that they didn’t quite get everything that was conveyed verbally or on a piece of paper. Access to a video will help those patients review the information multiple times, until they are comfortable with their understanding of the content.

Videos can also be recorded in multiple languages. For a direct care patient whose first language is not English, a video recorded in their native language could be critical for the physician to engage with them. Likewise, for patients who may be challenged with hearing or comprehension difficulties, a video could be the solution for the direct care physician to engage with them in a more meaningful way.

As the trend toward remote healthcare, including telehealth, grows, videos will also become an important tool for engaging patients who cannot or prefer not to visit the direct care physician’s office. Engaging telehealth patients through video will become a critical aspect of their care as the direct care physician reaches out to provide healthcare through emerging virtual services.

Preventive care is particularly suited to videos. The direct care physician can record videos of various aspects of preventive care and make those videos available to patients on a website, through patient portals, and in the practice’s waiting area. Preventive care videos would emphasize those activities that contribute to the patient’s overall health, engaging patients in their journey toward positive healthcare outcomes.