Healthcare providers are increasingly adopting agility and customer-focused principles.
IT and clinical executives rushed to implement new solutions at Southcoast Health, a community-based health system operating in southeast Massachusetts and Rhode Island, in the spring of 2020. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth became a mission-critical service like other healthcare organizations. The company also needed to figure out how to track tests and apply new triage procedures.
According to Jim Feen, senior vice president and chief information and digital officer at Southcoast, the pandemic effectively compelled the company to speed up its digital transformation initiatives drastically. They could create complex processes utilizing Microsoft Teams carts on wheels in about three to four days, something they would not have been able to do otherwise. They were cooperating via a command center, and the immediate needs sparked a lot of inventions.
According to Natalie Schibell, senior analyst for healthcare at Forrester, the pandemic “accelerated by at least a decade” the pace of digital change in healthcare.
She claims that in addition to telehealth, healthcare industry institutions quickly implemented solutions for electronic health record systems, hospital-at-home programs, and remote patient monitoring.
According to Schibell, as existing healthcare providers compete with drugstore chain-offered retail healthcare choices, the speed of digital change is anticipated to go up.
In addition to getting your over-the-counter meds from these locations, according to Schibell, you may also receive your immunization and visit a doctor there. She asserts that digital transformation must be given utmost attention if healthcare providers wish to stay up with the convenience and technological investment that retail health is now making.
With the opening of its new patient care center in December 2021, Southcoast consolidated the first wave of 37 small contact centers into a single operation with a single committed management team and a variety of cutting-edge technology to support the process.
Previously, according to Feen, Southcoast’s disjointed strategy for running its call center operations had unforeseen repercussions that impacted both performance and patient satisfaction. Service metrics were occasionally not reached. Only 30 to 40 percent of calls in some locations were answered in the first 30 seconds.
Feen claims they knew the need to improve their performance for our patients and the healthcare industry system. According to him, Southcoast had rapid performance enhancements that more than quadrupled performance for the early adopter clinics supported by the new service center.
The customer service center uses a variety of Avaya capabilities, including workforce management, speech analytics, call recording, callback assistance, and Epic EHR integration, which puts the patient at the center of each contact.
Southcoast is enhancing the experiences of both consumers and providers thanks to digital transformation. Through automation and an effort to simplify procedures, part of their objective with the tools is to assist combat staff burnout, which has become a widespread problem in the healthcare industry.
IT and business executives have made significant progress at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, the biggest children’s hospital in the United States, to enable online scheduling and check-in.
Texas Children’s Hospital expedited its digital transformation during the pandemic thanks to an effort launched in 2017 by the executive and medical leadership to improve patient scheduling and access.
Texas Children’s Hospital established a COVID-19 command center in March 2020 to address patient requirements after realizing that healthcare delivery will need to change to accommodate children in their communities.
More than 700,000 people used the Epic MyChart patient portal in 2021 to plan more than 1 million appointments, a 55 percent increase in usage from the previous year.
Texas Children’s Hospital deployed Microsoft Teams for eight months from 2019 to 2020 to meet operational demands and cooperation. Through video, text chat, and Teams channels, Teams improved collaboration and communication across employee and physician groups.
According to John Hamm, Texas Children’s Hospital’s vice president of information technology, effective digital transformation calls for more than simply the newest technology. The company trained IT leaders and executives on agile methods in 2019 and 2020 to prepare them for the quick change.
The University of Utah Health has worked to standardize its telehealth offerings, is standing up a Spanish-language patient portal, and is exploring how to integrate internal resources with patient internet searches better.
Amid the pandemic, Donna Roach started working as CIO at the University of Utah Health. At the time, the organization’s digital strategy focused nearly entirely on telehealth, but Roach spearheaded an initiative to develop a new roadmap for digital transformation. The system has six “swimlanes” with objectives that include increasing digital outreach and enhancing the customer experience.
The University of Utah Health is setting up a Spanish-language patient site, standardizing its telehealth services, and investigating ways to connect internal resources with patient online searches better.
According to Smith, switching to agile development is both a “challenge” and a “huge culture shift” at Texas Children’s. But, she continues, the hospital was able to manage the process by starting with modest pilots and appointing executive advocates for crucial stages of the road toward digital transformation.
The organization’s capacity to plan and provide care for patients during the pandemic has advanced because of strategic vision, investment in a digital basis, and a solid relationship between IT and operations. The capacity of Texas Children to offer the community the best care will continue to be supported by agile approaches and strong leadership partnerships.
To tackle upcoming issues, such as the so-called Great Resignation, Feen forecasts that Southcoast Health and other providers will continue to undertake digital transformation.
According to Feen, they should have been innovating because the demands would likely remain the same, if not intensified, in the future. He claims that they should take advantage of the situation now.
Contributions to Healthcare Computing Digital Transformation
Accenture’s poll from 2021 reveals rising spending on (and changing views toward) digital transformation in healthcare:
Over the next three years, 66% of respondents anticipate their firm will boost its investment in intelligent digital twins.
According to 87% of respondents, digital twins are increasingly crucial for their organization’s ability to collaborate in strategic ecosystem alliances.
Artificial intelligence might free up 55% of a health insurer’s labor capacity, allowing these employees to focus on other tasks.
92% of healthcare executives think “technology democratization,” which involves giving individuals around the firm access to potent tools, is essential to innovation.
89% of respondents think that the availability of hard-to-find talent and increased competition for talent result from remote employment.
All facets of healthcare industry will be affected by digital transformation, making it simpler to get treatment, enhancing care quality, and lowering costs. Customers may easily and quickly contact their favorite supplier. Digital transformation may contribute to better operational and financial efficiency, improved customer interactions, and the realization of long-term plans for health systems Healthcare Industry.
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