Consequences of not performing preventive exams

Photo: CDC

The term preventive care has gained a lot of significance over the past years. By preventive care, we mean detecting or preventing serious diseases and medical problems before they can become major. This term encompasses annual checks, certain tests, and screenings as well as flu shots for example. Preventive care has a crucial role in healthcare and the consequences of not performing preventive exams on time are serious. Let's take a look at why preventive exams are so important and how they can be enhanced and made more efficient through new digital tools and technologies.

The importance of preventive care

As we have already mentioned, preventive care plays a crucial role in the world of healthcare. By detecting any kind of medical problem that can later become more complicated or major, healthcare providers are able to help their patients maintain their health condition from getting worse. Is there any difference between diagnostic care and preventive care?

For starters, diagnostic care refers to services in which your provider is looking for something specific. This is often based on the results of a preventive test or screening. The follow-up is to check for something that may have been detected during the preventive test. The main goal of preventive care is to maintain the health of patients and keep a close eye on any kind of pre-established health condition.

The benefits of preventive care are many. With regularly scheduled follow-ups, doctors are able to identify any medical problems before they can become major. When these regular follow-ups are skipped, the problems can worsen. Therefore, the consequences of not performing preventive exams are very large.

How overbooking stops preventive care

Preventive care means arranging different follow-ups for various patients. Some of these patients will have weekly follow-ups while others will have them on a monthly basis for example. However, as we have seen through the years of the global pandemic that started in 2020, the healthcare systems around the world can easily get overwhelmed by the increase in patients. This increase impacts any kind of another scheduling process including the ones related to preventive care. That is why overbooking stops preventive care as well as many other services that a healthcare clinic can offer. How can this be avoided? Well, throughout recent years, we have seen an increase in the usage of digital tools and services that can help clinics around the world with scheduling, patient management, and so much more.

Similar to overbooking, the problem of no-shows also prevents certain services from being carried out properly by the healthcare providers including preventive care services. So, overbooking and no-shows need to be tackled head-on in order to ensure that they do not interfere with patients' healthcare journeys. This can be achieved with the use of digital technologies in the form of AI. Digital services powered by such AI can greatly enhance the outreach of clinics, increase workflow and help patients quickly and easily interact with their healthcare providers. Let's take a closer look at how this all would work.

Preventive health campaigns and the use of digital tools and services

A digital, online service that helps patients follow their healthcare journey and keep an eye out for their conditions can efficiently allow healthcare providers to manage their patients. This digital service helps patients by reminding them of those regular, periodic check-ups, follow-ups, and screenings. The service is powered by a natural language processing AI. This means that the communication that would normally happen between an agent working at the front desk or a contact center and a patient would now happen between a patient and an AI. However, this is no regular AI.

A natural language processing AI is carefully built to interact in the world of healthcare and maintain normal communication with patients as if it were a regular person. Furthermore, it can adapt based on patients' preferences, to communicate in a different manner. The main goal is to deliver patients with highly personalized, timely, and accurate information regarding their healthcare journey through a carefully designed preventive campaign. This service essentially acts as a form of preventive health assistant. It can maintain a continuous dialogue with the patient through email. The health assistant in the form of a natural language processing engine Patricia will inform you of the care you require and will help you schedule appointments. These services will cover various different regular check-ups such as annual PAP control, mammography, prostate control for men over 50 years of age, and healthy control in children, among others.

AI and technology as a better path towards a more optimized health and efficient healthcare services

Overall, the consequences of missed preventive care appointments are huge. With well-set up, efficient, and accessible preventive care, patients and doctors can monitor ongoing health conditions and act on time if the regular check-ups show something new. However, clinics are easily overwhelmed when it comes to the increase in patients. Therefore, new ways are needed to ensure that each patient can quickly and easily access the healthcare services they need as well as schedule their follow-ups on time.

A natural language processing engine such as Patricia can greatly help in this matter. For starters, it can maintain a continuous dialogue that is meaningful and accurate with patients. The use of digital services means making healthcare services more accessible to patients regardless of distance. With preventive care campaigns as mentioned above, health clinics can deliver their patients accurate information about their conditions and through AI communicate when and if additional follow-ups are needed. Patients will be able to experience a much smoother experience and be more involved in their own healthcare journey without having to go through tedious contact centers in order to set up the next follow-up.