The news: Not-for-profit health system UNC Health integrated new navigation features from Gozio Health with the patient communication platform from Well Health.

• UNC uses Well Health to text patients an appointment reminder containing a smart link to download the health system’s app. It also provides integration with Epic’s MyChart.
• Gozio’s functionality lets patients save appointments to a mobile calendar.

The UNC app will also include a Gozio “wayfinding link” on patients’ calendars to direct them to a hospital or doctor’s office. Wayfinding uses GPS to situate patients on their location and provides turn-by-turn directions to a doctor’s office, parking space, or home.

The app also helps patients find the closest urgent care center and emergency department. For context, hospitals such as Cedars Sinai and UnityPoint Health use Well’s secure messaging tools, including texting, email, and phone.

How we got here: In 2019, UNC first teamed up with Gozio to launch a mobile patient engagement app with wayfinding features.

• In 2021, UNC worked with Gozio to add a My UNC Chart, appointment scheduling, and patient wait times.

Trendspotting: “Digital front door” can mean many things to healthcare providers, from remote patient monitoring to marketing outreach, but wayfinding and symptom triaging are top of mind for healthcare professionals.

• For 95% of healthcare providers, the term meant finding and arranging care, per a September 28 KLAS Research Digital Front Door 2021 report. That includes use of chatbot, provider search, and patient check-in tools.

The big takeaway: Patients are looking for a smooth digital experience and a central entry point to access their medical care.

Wayfinding is an essential tool to help patients navigate the many corridors of complex health care centers with multiple buildings. For example, UNC Health operates UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill and UNC REX Healthcare in Raleigh. The UNC app’s wayfinding feature helps patients find locations around a hospital such as cafes and restrooms. Patients can even mark their parking location in the app.

A digital front door is table stakes for health care providers that aim to improve the patient experience and boost patient outcomes. That doesn’t simply mean offering telehealth.

• In fact, only 57% of health care consumers were satisfied with how today’s digital tools let them schedule a telehealth or in-person appointment, per a July 2022 Optum survey.
• And although 82% of healthcare executives have mobile tools, only 38% rated them a success at 8 or higher on a scale of 1 to 10, per a 2022 Gozio Healthcare Executive Survey.

What’s next? Providers who haven’t been thinking about digital should increase their efforts to offer features such as wayfinding, scheduling, payments, and mobile calendar integration in a unified digital front door platform.

Go deeper: Check out our 2022 Healthcare Consumer report.