What is a Digital Front Door?

A digital front door is the virtual entry point for a healthcare delivery system. It mirrors a hospital’s physical entrance, but instead guides patients to care from outside the facility’s walls. 

According to a 2024 digital transformation study by McKinsey, 79 percent of surveyed health system executives have either already implemented or plan to implement a digital front door in the next two years.

While these numbers are encouraging, and multiple digital entry points are necessary for broad patient access, new digital front doors often create a disjointed experience.

For example, healthcare delivery systems may have a few different options, like:

• An embedded webpage
• Custom-branded app
• Specific phone number
• Existing patient portal

But what happens when the embedded webpage allows scheduling that’s separate from the primary patient portal? Or a specific phone number routes a patient through a call center that must manually relay information to the care team? Or the system matches patients with the “wrong” providers during scheduling (particularly with subspecialists), or it fails to accommodate their preferred language for the appointment.

This siloed approach creates point-to-point fragmentation for providers, forcing them to navigate multiple systems just to complete a single interaction, drastically hindering efficiency and scalability.

Returning to the physical entrance analogy, adding more doors to the hospital doesn’t help if they lead to the basement. Healthcare delivery systems need multiple points of entry that connect into one seamless experience. For patients, this means a personalized, cohesive journey where they never feel lost, regardless of their starting point. 

Optimizing Patient Triage and Throughput

Left unresolved, these problems create a digital maze and are why so many healthcare delivery systems are seeking an enterprise solution to manage their digital front-door ecosystem effectively. They’re looking for an intelligent digital front door strategy.

With eVisit, for example, healthcare delivery systems receive an intelligent triage and navigation platform. This technology, paired with our team’s expertise and best practices, optimizes the clinical, operational, and financial performance across the enterprise. 

eVisit helps by: 

• Connecting the various digital front doors to all communicate with each other
• Providing a consistent experience for existing and new digital front door touchpoints
• Updating the queue page in real time so it can be accessed by a wide variety of providers 
• Allows patients to have more flexibility with their scheduling — eliminating long wait times and high no-show rates. 

To further improve throughput, eVisit integrates into the EHR, eliminating extra steps for providers or extra forms for patients. This ensures real-time, bidirectional patient data synchronization, critical for rapid, informed clinical decision-making. Providers can instantly access a complete patient history without leaving the EHR. This streamlined workflow minimizes the opportunity for human error during data entry.

Routing Patients to the Appropriate Level of Care

One additional thought to consider, while digital front doors are often viewed as a solution for low-acuity patients (example: someone with a cold accessing virtual urgent care instead of going to the Emergency Department), a connected digital front door strategy is crucial in the reverse situation. For instance, if a patient uses a digital front door for virtual urgent care but it’s determined that they have concerning, higher-acuity symptoms. This patient can be quickly connected with a specialist or routed to emergency services. 

To move beyond point-to-point solutions and truly compete for the modern patient, healthcare delivery systems must implement a strategy that is intelligent, integrated, and seamless. Discover how NYC Health + Hospitals (NYC H+H) is utilizing eVisit to move low acuity cases out of their Emergency Departments by offering 24/7 access to digital care.