4PatientCare: Transforming Healthcare Communication

4PatientCare increases practice revenue, lowers operational costs, frees valuable staff time for high-value activities, fills your schedule, and lowers no-show rates: Dr. Jeffrey Guterman, CMO, 4PatientCare

New technology developments permeate our lives. We have transformed the way we shop, travel, make and communicate with friends, perform our jobs, and the myriad of other activities we call living. Despite all this technological advancement, healthcare delivery remains fairly traditional. Want to see your doctor? Better call and make an appointment during normal business hours. Need a referral to a specialist? If you’re lucky the specialist might get some information in advance of your visit. Most commonly, you’re filling out yet another poorly Xeroxed form for the 10th time. 

We know health care delivery is frustrating; that’s why we are so excited to present 4PatientCare, an innovative patient communication, engagement, care coordination, and acquisition platform that seeks to bring more happiness to healthcare.

4PatientCare allows practices to fill their schedules automatically, reduce their no-show rates, and build their online web presence; all while minimizing staff time, optimizing office efficiency, and increasing revenue. Appointments are booked following the practice scheduling rules and confirmed without any staff involvement. Automated, integrated, interactive communication via email, text, voice and print ensure that patients arrive on time and prepared for their appointment. 

Interview Excerpt: Jeffrey Guterman, CMO & Rockwell Shah, President

Why was the company set up?

Fundamentally we saw two solvable problems. The patient experience was miserable compared to other service industries, and administrative healthcare costs were out of control. We built a platform that addressed many of the shortcomings we identified in the healthcare market. The platform spans from remote monitoring to reduce hospital admission and readmission rates, to tracking the patient referral journey through different doctors, to effectively communicating the right message, to the right patient, at the right time. The platform is proving fruitful; you can concurrently improve clinical care and patient satisfaction while lowering the total cost of care and operations.

Our solution provides a fully-automated cloud-based infrastructure that enables healthcare providers to provide a personal “Nordstrom-like” experience that consumers have come to expect. From small single doctor practices to large medical centres and everyone in between, we are delivering now on our initial goal: to ensure more happiness, efficiency and effectiveness in healthcare.

We started as a natural language voice platform, helping organizations automate many of the mundane tasks they encountered every day. Over the years we have expanded to email, text, postal, social media and the web; pushing the boundaries of engagement and always focusing on how to improve the patient and practice experience for the better. We now have thousands of doctors using our system to achieve better results for millions of patients every year. 

Tell us about your first product that was launched?

Originally we developed an incredibly sophisticated voice recognition technology. Remember, this was 1999 – Siri and Google Assistant didn’t exist. This was groundbreaking at the time. We used it to create automated phone calls that people could schedule, re-schedule, confirm or cancel their appointments. It was a hit. It saved a ton of staff time and effort.

What were the grounds on which you have expanded your company and its offerings over the years?

Today’s healthcare consumer is demanding. They want the convenience found in other industries to extend to their healthcare interactions. We bring the same convenience of booking online travel to patients who want to see their doctor. No more phone tag, no busy signals, no wasted time, and no wasted opportunities. Our automated communications are triggered by your personally configured business rules. We require no staff interaction to send your pre-appointment, recall and reminder campaigns. The system fits into the way you practice, not the other way around.

Fundamentally, we thought about the patient journey and created closed-loop services that improve both the patient and the practice experience.  Whether it’s incorporating sophisticated machine learning optimization algorithms, solving online scheduling, or just simple thank you surveys; it’s built to improve the healthcare journey for everyone involved.

What do you feel are the reasons behind your product popularity?

We are always on the cutting edge. Part of the magic of what we do is recognize the person we take care of is both a consumer and a patient. How you interact with the person depends on clinical needs and personal desires. We perform deep analytics on a multitude of scenarios, so you can automatically A-B test to spot the differences that truly make a difference.

Everything we are famous for is in the quality of our staff. And we have the best. Our culture empowers individuals to leverage their strengths while collaborating and learning from others. We have a shared vision and purpose; everyone’s role is valuable.

Do you have any new products ready to be/getting ready to be rolled out into the market?

This year, our growing Patient Engagement and Acquisition services are diving deeper into the latest generation of data analysis and machine learning, opening the door for forward thinking organizations to be one step ahead in the future of healthcare and communication.

Care Coordination is the latest exciting addition to the 4PatientCare suite. We are solving the inefficiencies and frustration of the referral process with our unifying platform. ‘CareCo’ automatically connects multiple entities on disparate systems to present a unified view of the patient journey throughout the referral process.

Where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

The future is very bright, and we are excited for the potential of our Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems to mature into automated optimization paradigms that will help patients get better outcomes and allow organizations to reduce their costs dramatically.

The healthcare industry needs help. It’s spending enormous amounts of money per capita and not getting good enough results. Platforms like 4PatientCare can and will change that, with a few clicks of a button.

Meet the Leadership Team

Rockwell Shah, President: After graduating from Cornell University in Economics, Mr. Shah spent 10 years working his way up from being a tech support agent to the President of 4PatientCare. He has an efficient operator’s skill set and is a true leader that can see the larger picture. He is resourceful; astute at evaluating and making the most of undervalued assets and resources.

Jeffrey Guterman, CMO: Dr. Guterman is the Chief Research and Innovation Officer in the Ambulatory Care Network of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. He is a Clinical Health Sciences Professor of Medicine and Emergency Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. His research focuses on the application of information technology to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of medical care resulted in practical and implementable solutions that are changing the way care is delivered.