Patients Don’t Need More Healthcare Messages. They Need Coordinated Ones.

Vaccine season is here. Health systems, insurers, and pharmacies are sending tens of millions of messages to patients, reminding them to schedule flu and COVID shots. But how effective are those messages?

Patients receive multiple and sometimes redundant communications from different sources. They get reminders, results, and requests from primary care, specialists, insurers, labs, and pharmacies, by phone, text, email, and portal. Each system sends its own messages without knowing what the others already sent.

This is modern medicine’s paradox. Patients, providers, and insurers all have an overabundance of information, but no one has a way to organize it effectively. Systems have many ways to communicate with patients, but that communication lacks orchestration.

Because healthcare communication too often lacks coordination, patients struggle to separate signal from noise. The results can be disastrous.

Fragmentation leads to patient confusion and disengagement, which in turn can hurt access to care. Rather than trying to manage multiple streams of information, patients need an orchestrated experience with coordinated, proactive communication across every channel.

It shouldn’t matter if the patient turns to their phone, email, or portal. The next step in their healthcare journey should be clear. Orchestrating the patient journey can optimize operations for healthcare systems and, most importantly, improve patients’ access to care.

Fragmented Journeys Create Barriers to Care

Patients have access to more information than ever. Yet they are struggling to find the information they need when they need it.

For example, imagine a primary care physician refers a patient for an endoscopy after he experienced trouble swallowing. As his appointment approaches, it’s not clear where to find crucial preparation instructions. If the patient can’t access that information, he might show up for the endoscopy unprepared for the procedure, unable to get the care he needs after weeks of waiting.

He’s forced to reschedule, and the cycle begins again.

Communication between patients and providers is often challenging. One study found patients accurately recalled only about half of the decisions and recommendations from their visit a week later. This makes patients’ ability to find the right information vital. Yet the fragmented communication environment of healthcare too often acts as a barrier to care.

Portals are a useful example. They were introduced to make communication easier and have become one of the most common ways patients receive information. The share of patients who accessed online medical records or portals more than doubled in the past decade, from 25% in 2014 to 65% in 2024.

But the rise in portal use hasn’t necessarily improved the patient journey. Nearly six in 10 patients reported having multiple online medical records or patient portals, up from 50% just two years earlier. Only 7% of patients use an app to combine them.

The issue isn’t the portal. It’s that each portal, text, and call operates on its own. When patients have yet another source of information to manage, their healthcare journey grows increasingly complex.

The problem with this growing web of patient information is a lack of coordination. When portals, channels, and systems aren’t in sync with each other, it creates a maze that patients are forced to navigate to receive crucial information.

Without cross-channel orchestration, too much information creates the same problems as a lack of information.

Fragmentation Hurts Patients and Care Teams

When communication is fragmented, both patients and health systems suffer. Patients face increasing barriers to care. Providers experience missed appointments and increased workloads.

Fragmentation leaves patients with more information but less certainty about how to act on it. This kind of information overload has also been associated with strain and burnout for care teams. Patients experience more stress as confusion about their next step mounts. Staff spend more time answering questions when information is unclear, and rescheduling and following up with patients who miss appointments.

A 2023 poll found that 70% of physicians feel inundated with more data than they can reasonably manage. This kind of data fatigue leads to worker burnout and decreased patient satisfaction.

Much of that routine work can be automated. Coordinated outreach handles routine confirmations, reminders, and rescheduling across emails, text messages, phone calls, and portals, so patients find what they need without calling and care teams can focus on patients who need a person on the line.

What Orchestration Looks Like in Practice

Health systems often try to fix fragmentation by adding another tool. But a new layer that doesn’t connect to the others only adds to the noise. The technology has to be connected and coordinated around the patient. That’s what orchestration does.

Orchestration means connecting all the different points of the patient journey to one another so that they work well together. It’s big-picture thinking that ensures patients receive the right information at the right times through the right channels, so they know what to do.

So how can health systems achieve a more coherent, orchestrated patient journey? These four shifts in thinking are useful starting points.

1. Find and fix data silos. An audit of the patient journey can pinpoint handoffs where a patient’s next step becomes unclear. Fixing them means getting those systems to share information and messaging with one another. When a primary care physician refers a patient to cardiology, for example, the referral should trigger scheduling outreach from the specialist’s office. Once the patient books, the referral reminders stop.
2. Reduce redundant messaging. When patients receive multiple notifications to pre-register for the same appointment, they learn to ignore all of them, including the ones crucial to their care. Coordinating across channels means a patient who pre-registers from a text link doesn’t also get the email and the call. Outreach that displays the health system’s name and logo, such as branded Rich Communication Services (RCS) texts, helps patients recognize it as legitimate rather than spam.
3. Tailor messages to individual patients. Some patients would rather confirm an appointment by phone. Others find a call intrusive and prefer a text or email. Some prefer a language other than English. Coordinated systems can use what they know about each patient to determine the next best action and deliver it on the channel that patient uses. For example, a patient who ignores two emails gets a text, or a patient who prefers Spanish gets prep instructions in Spanish.
4. Rethink ROI. Health systems often judge tools by efficiency, but patients don’t experience care in those terms. The better measure is how well a tool reduces delays in care. Instead of counting messages sent, health systems can track how many referrals become completed visits, how many patients complete preventive screenings, and whether no-show rates drop after outreach.

When care and communication are orchestrated, patients get the right message at the right time on their preferred channel. Take our endoscopy patient from before. When his primary care provider’s and specialist’s systems work together, they send prep instructions two or three days before his procedure, in his preferred language and channel, with a link to confirm and complete pre-check-in. If he doesn’t confirm, a text follows. If that goes unanswered, an automated call checks in.

Making Technology Work for Patients

Technology, such as portals, is not going anywhere. If current trends continue, their usage will likely increase. But they don’t have to be a source of confusion or information overload.

When tools—along with email, text messages, and phone calls—are a part of a coordinated, multi-channel communication strategy, patients are able to get the care they need. The next step in their health journey is clear.

Providers need to re-envision care through cross-channel orchestration. This is the throughline that can help individual tools like portals serve patients. Making each patient and their journey the focus of care helps providers reduce fragmentation and ensure all patients have access to the care they deserve.