Digital transformation—a shift to technology and cloud-based service models—is expected to increase clinic efficiency, improve patient care, and support value-based reimbursement models. However, when problems with digital transformation work, they can plunge organizations into the chaos of half-finished plans, duplication of work, and security breaches, which can lead to frustration, unexpected costs, and increased risks.
To do this, the stakes are high. With changes in reimbursement models, compliance regulations, and patient expectations, digital transformation is no longer an option. In order to do this, the healthcare CIO has some clear considerations.
Don’t: Expect the goal to shift from paper to digital
Healthcare organizations often confuse the actual work of digital transformation with simply moving from paper to computer screens. Don’t be fooled. Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of your practice, fundamentally changing the way your providers and employees operate and the way they create value for patients. If all you do is copy inefficient paper systems, you will only frustrate employees, providers, and patients. Not surprisingly, the costs will outweigh the benefits.
Do: look for opportunities for cultural change
Digital transformation is actually a cultural transformation. This shift sometimes means abandoning long-standing processes in favor of new practices that are still being defined. What features can be added to your practice? Where is the inefficiency that sticky notes and binders cannot solve? What additional services does your patient group need? These may include telemedicine functions to make healthcare more convenient and efficient, remote monitoring to help patients manage chronic diseases, easy-to-use analytical dashboards to support population health goals, or patient participation platforms to reduce non-occurrences and improve care compliance .
Don’t: Underestimate the value of the cloud
Although local servers are a reasonable approach to the IT foundation of many healthcare organizations, that time has passed. Hardware costs, software patching, IT resources, and security challenges are just a small part of the local challenges.
The cloud provides reliable, high-performance, always up-to-date, and secure access to all key clinical and business systems, allowing employees and providers to use technology to serve patients and maintain clinic business functions anytime and anywhere. The cloud-based system also supports today’s most complex analysis tools to help you better serve patients and optimize revenue.
Do: consider safety first
Security is the foundation of trust between providers and patients, so it is an important foundation for any technical discussion. As the healthcare industry continues to be one of the most targeted industries for cyber attackers, this becomes increasingly clear every day.
When studying the migration to the cloud, dig deeper into the security foundation of the cloud provider. Make sure they understand the unique importance and requirements of medical care. The cloud environment designed for healthcare provides HITRUST certification based on NIST and more than 40 other global security standards, and contains more than 400 control and implementation requirements. This simplifies HIPAA compliance and ensures the highest level of security and protection for personal health information and clinic data. Your cloud provider should also provide a fully managed network operations and security operations center to protect your patients and your business.
Don’t: Put technology and patient needs in different islands
Healthcare providers may view IT and patient care as separate issues, but digital transformation may have a major impact on the way you provide better patient outcomes and receive compensation. Consider the needs of patients and the workflow of providers and employees. Then look at how technology can be integrated into these workflows to make them more efficient and satisfying.
For example, consider how an intuitive visual dashboard for the patient of the day can improve the provider meeting at the beginning of the day based on a complex analysis of the patient’s complete history. Likewise, please consider how analysis can help you ensure that you get all the reimbursements you get for your clinic ownership.
Do: Link technology to quality of care
Value-based nursing is a fundamental change to traditional nursing methods. Like many things in technology, it centers on the ability to capture and report data. You need to demonstrate that the quality of care continues to show three key results: how you can provide care that is better for the individual, better for the population, and at a lower cost. The ability to provide this information systematically can be challenging.
Digital transformation provides the basic technology for collecting data. More importantly, the technology supports business processes to collect, store, analyze, and generate data, so you can be paid based on the quality of care provided to the patient rather than the quantity.
Don’t: exclude patients
The services provided by your clinic are very personalized, and healthcare consumers expect their providers to understand their individual needs. Personalization is essential for patient participation: if you do not understand the personal attributes of the patient, then your participation strategy will be basic and ineffective.
For many healthcare organizations, the only patient aspect of digital transformation is the patient portal, but installing one is not enough. Are your patients using the portal as expected? is that useful? For some demographics, is it more successful than others? How to improve?
Do: Use digital technology to attract patients
Increasing patients’ knowledge and understanding will encourage them to actively participate in their own well-being and make choices that help improve their health. Patient participation also brings financial benefits because it reduces absenteeism, increases provider income, and improves provider-patient relationships.
Digital transformation allows you to collect, organize, and analyze patient data, such as demographics, psychology, social media activities, behavior patterns, clinical history, office interactions, etc. This data allows you to generate a 360-degree view of patients and populations, provide you with the insights you need to effectively deploy patient engagement, and provide truly patient-centric value-based care.
Don’t: Stop working remotely
In 2020, healthcare providers quickly implemented solutions that are not optimal in many cases to deal with the remote environment required by the Covid-19 pandemic. But it is important to remember that telemedicine is more than just video calls.
A positive result of the pandemic is the realization that remote work and remote interaction may be much more successful than previously assumed. Think bigger now.
Do: Thinking beyond telemedicine
Digital transformation supports a wide range of telemedicine and remote services, including video conferencing, store-and-forward imaging, research, remote patient monitoring and education, and warm handover to nursing facilities. For providers, this is an excellent opportunity to consider how to combine the knowledge they learned during the pandemic and take action through a well-planned digital transformation plan to respond to patients’ requests for convenient, high-quality remote New expectations for medical services.
When you’re ready, explore your options
Digital transformation in the healthcare sector is not a simple task. Taking a comprehensive and long-term perspective will help you avoid surprises and save money by combining plans and services. The results in terms of increased productivity and practical workflow; reduced frustration for patients, providers, and staff; knowing that the data is safe and the business is protected, peace of mind should make it very worthwhile.
Photo: Marco Barbie, Getty Images
