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The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a wave of health innovation that is still sweeping the industry. For example, the increased adoption of virtual assistance has important political implications with Congress now considering whether Medicare will continue to pay for telemedicine services after the current health emergency declaration expires.
While telemedicine is one of the most visible frontiers of healthcare innovation, the industry is poised to undergo another major change that is more hidden from public view. Providing virtual care can offer greater convenience and accessibility for patients. But the biggest challenge is to lay the foundation for innovation in healthcare systems that enables providers to streamline their workflows and collaborate more effectively, ultimately improving patient care.
The need for unified collaboration
Supplier-centric workflow tools have been a neglected area of innovation and adoption within many healthcare systems. In recent years, many hospitals have focused on centralizing technology platforms and strengthening supplier relationships. At the same time, the trend towards the acquisition of hospitals and doctors’ offices has put pressure to adopt scalable technology that systems can instantly deploy to new sites. The trend is fewer tools that can do more things and serve as a single source of truth for on-premise and distributed teams.
The pandemic has further highlighted the need for agile collaboration platforms that meet the urgent needs of healthcare employers, such as the need to quickly add new team members to meet a wave of patients. At the height of the pandemic, many health systems struggled to manage an influx of new team members and newly organized multidisciplinary crisis response teams.
Many healthcare systems simply did not have the infrastructure to handle these demands efficiently. Hospitals have traditionally operated with a fragmented mix of digital and analog workflows and communication tools, from emails to paper calendars. While these tools serve a purpose, they have significant shortcomings when it comes to enabling suppliers to perform at their best. For example, various email and scheduling tools cannot synchronize with each other or adapt to rapidly changing information, such as a calling provider.
Most communication tools also require team members to contact specific nominated persons which can create delays in sending or receiving critical information when the nominated person is not available or known. For example, the required individual could be the nurse in charge of the intensive care unit or the cardiologist on duty, which can vary by roles, shifts and more, so the clinical collaboration platform should fit this common scenario using the role-based messaging. Finally, most communication tools are not designed for the specific needs of healthcare professionals, such as stringent requirements for maintaining patient privacy, regulatory compliance, and rapid delivery of mission-critical information.
In many hospital systems, the goal of change has been the implementation and customization of electronic health record (EHR) systems. In this stage of maturity, EHR and other solutions have laid the foundation for documenting and managing the revenue cycle. Now, healthcare systems are recognizing the need to lay a technology foundation for a very different and more provider-centric purpose: real-time communication and collaboration. Further innovation and adoption in this area will improve the quality of care, patient outcomes and healthcare efficiency.
All of these factors point to the need for unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions that integrate multiple communication channels on a cloud-based system. UCaaS tools created for healthcare specifically support clinical teams and their need for reliable, secure, and intuitive collaboration.
Overcoming operational barriers to innovation
Enabling the exchange of information and communication in real time can be a challenge even for the most future-oriented organizations. The first critical step is to align leadership to define the aspect of innovation for their specific healthcare system. This step requires leaders to express a vision of what is possible while at the same time finding solutions for what is feasible. Hospitals have to make sacrifices when adopting a new platform, because the software cannot offer every imaginable feature or functionality for every user of the system. But if teams are willing to give little to lay the groundwork, they can achieve a lot in return by refining the solution over time.
Doctors, nurses and IT managers, along with other members of the C-Suite, should all be involved in the decision-making process on which technology to implement. Engaging both clinical and IT stakeholders is critical to understanding the needs of each cohort, helping to ensure smooth rollout and broad adoption across teams. The very notion of collaborative tools underscores the importance of the care team as a whole representing multiple roles and specialties involved in patient care. Embracing this reality requires a radically different approach from isolated decision making.
Coupled with broad leadership consensus, executing change requires a strong high-level clinical champion in the organization. This champion must be dedicated to project success, respected by colleagues and employees, and able to invest time in launching.
Gaining system-wide acceptance for new technology requires leaders to address the established habits, knowledge, and perhaps even fears of their employees about learning a new system. The risk-averse mentality of health care can permeate an organization’s culture. Therefore, embracing innovation requires a top-down, inside-out approach, while putting the needs of doctors at the fore.
Because innovation always comes with a learning curve, health systems must also proactively educate their teams on best practices for using collaboration platforms. These platforms are best suited for real-time and actionable communications, such as a nurse consulting with a specialist about a patient’s status and next steps in the care plan. Conversely, more administrative tasks can be handled better in the EHR or by email.
Collaboration tools can act as a protection system for clinicians by reducing interruptions in their workflow. Unlike pagers that ping with a wide variety of requests, a modern communications platform can emit different tones or vibrations based on the urgency of the request. Educating users about what’s appropriate to post on these platforms helps ensure the technology serves them, not the other way around.
Finally, infrastructure constraints can create an obstacle to innovation. Before adopting any technology solution, healthcare systems must undertake a clinical workflow and IT discovery process. This process helps teams define current capability and identify barriers to integration or adoption. For example, teams need to understand bandwidth limits because VoIP calls require more bandwidth than text-based alerts. Additionally, deploying mobile apps in Bring Your Own Device environments will look different than when using employer-supplied devices. Teams should evaluate their existing infrastructure to make sure it supports the foundation they are laying and address any obstacles ahead of time.
Looking forward
Continuing the trajectory of healthcare innovation relies on physicians’ ability to do their jobs more easily and efficiently, which can improve metrics such as provider engagement and satisfaction, patient outcomes, patient performance, and the length of hospitalization. Streamlining collaboration allows providers to deliver medical expertise with as few obstacles as possible. Health systems can also extend their collaborative tools to work more efficiently with community partners such as EMS and post-acute care facilities, improving continuity of care. Hospitals that are willing to embrace change and overcome operational barriers can transform the relationship with their providers into their jobs, ultimately improving care delivery and patient experience.
Photo: Khanisorn Chaokla, Getty Images
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