Situation

Hospitals everywhere face a common challenge in managing pre-consultations for complex cases. Patients often require multidisciplinary care, with input from multiple specialties such as pain management, internal medicine, and physical therapy. Each appointment involves extensive discussions, requiring patients to answer detailed questions about their medical history, symptoms, and quality of life.

Complication

Patients often arrive unprepared or uninformed about what is expected of them, leading to wasted time during appointments. Nurses or administrative staff must manually track down missing data, while clinicians spend precious minutes gathering basic information instead of focusing on treatment planning.

These inefficiencies ripple through the entire system:

1) Patient frustration: Patients grow weary of answering the same questions repeatedly and feel unheard when time runs out for addressing their concerns.

2) Staff burden: Care teams spend too much time on administrative tasks, leaving less time for personalized care.

3) Capacity limits: With appointments running longer than necessary, departments are unable to see as many patients as they could, further straining resources.

Without a streamlined process, hospitals are unable to deliver the level of efficiency and patient satisfaction they strive for, particularly as patient volumes increase.

Resolution

Our customers use Awell to transform pre-consultations by automating and personalizing patient engagement. Up to 10 days before an appointment, patients are contacted through their preferred channels—SMS, email, or AI-powered phone reminders—to complete tailored questionnaires that gather critical medical and quality-of-life information. For patients who forget or can’t complete the survey beforehand, care teams ensure the process remains smooth by offering on-site completion via a tablet.

Patient responses are automatically compiled into a detailed report and integrated directly into the hospital’s EMR. Clinicians walk into consultations fully prepared, armed with the information they need to focus on the patient—not paperwork.

By continually learning from patient behavior, teams using Awell optimize engagement strategies to achieve higher response rates, making pre-consultation workflows seamless and efficient for everyone involved.