Whether it’s in our personal or professional lives, digital technologies are boosting productivity, efficiency, and convenience. It’s especially true in health care where digitization—accelerated by the COVID-19 outbreak—is no longer a differentiator for health care organizations. Patients expect clinicians to adopt and embrace digital capabilities to deliver high-quality, connected, patient-centric care.
A recent white paper discusses the shift toward a digital-first approach to health care and what it means to patients, providers, and the overall industry. Here are three ways that driving interoperability and focusing on digital experiences can help clinicians provide better care while improving clinical workflows.
1. Digital health improves care coordination
Traditional care management and patient experiences can be complicated and overwhelming. Think back to the not-so-distant days of clinicians telephoning patients to deliver test results. Now, digital-based health care models are linked with electronic health record (EHR) systems, where patients can instantly access test results and other health information. Digital and app-based technologies help clinicians maintain a more efficient and effective workflow—improving care, as well as the experience for both patient and clinician.
At the heart of improved care and experience is the patient’s understanding of their health and adherence to care plans. Health care technology can simplify the process of educating patients with platforms such as Krames On FHIR® that integrate seamlessly into the EHR and directly into the clinician’s workflow. Clinicians can educate patients to activate them in their health—wherever they are on their health journey and whatever their learning style—by sharing engaging digital, video, and print content based on the patient’s profile and current clinical encounter, at the point of care.
Digitization of health care connects care, enabling a multidisciplinary lineup of clinicians to create and deliver coordinated care plans. Digital health platforms remain especially important as a growing approach to health care involves working with multiple clinicians, from primary care providers to specialists and lifestyle support staff—with the ability for all care team members to securely access, add to, and share a patient’s health information. They help ensure patients get the right care at the right time, with consistent care and communication touchpoints along the way.
Improved care coordination not only benefits the patient’s health but also increases care delivery efficiency and effectiveness. It prevents delays in diagnosis and treatment and eliminates (often costly) redundancies like duplicate testing and polypharmacy.
2. Digital health boosts patient–provider communication and relationships
An efficient digital-based approach to care supports the real-time, safe exchange of health information (or interoperability) and facilitates accessible, cross-platform channels of communication between patient and provider.
As consumers, patients expect the same seamless, connected, multichannel experiences with clinicians that they enjoy with their favorite brands. For instance, patients want access to providers outside of appointments along with deeper personalization. Recent surveys reported that three-quarters of respondents wanted more communication opportunities and wished their health care experiences were more personalized.1,2
Clinicians that embrace a digital approach to health care can deliver continuous, aligned messaging before and after care, reassuring their patients and managing their expectations. An integrated digital platform further improves patients’ health literacy, helping them communicate their concerns effectively and cutting down on valuable consultation time. Plus, when patients have a better understanding of their care, their anxiety is eased, reducing cancellations and surprise no-shows.
Of course, better communication leads to better patient-doctor relationships, carrying over to improved patient brand loyalty and retention, and correlating to higher satisfaction of health care workers.
3. Digital health streamlines clinical workflows through EHR integration
Despite advances in health care technology and interoperability in the past decade, there are still many processes in a clinician’s workflow that remain manual or repetitive. A digital-first approach to clinical workflow management—with an eye toward interoperability—streamlines these clinician workflows to support their guidance and free them up to spend more time caring for patients.
Adopting a successful digital strategy requires EHR workflow integration to improve interoperability, facilitate the efficient delivery of care, and customize patient education and resources. Advances such as SMART ON FHIR have ignited new ways to connect applications securely and efficiently to EHR systems. Krames On FHIR is integrated directly within the provider’s EHR workflow and provides education tailored to each patient’s needs or physician’s preference, eliminating unnecessary apps, clicks, and delays.
Any change to clinical workflow requires change management and clear, continued communication across your technical, clinical informatics, and patient experience teams. For a new health technology to deliver as promised, clinicians must use it correctly and continuously. When you partner with Krames, our proven team of project managers and technical specialists will guide you through the rollout, transition, and implementation of new technologies to ensure clinician adoption with minimal friction and maximum success.
References
1 Text statistics, text messaging facts, stats, and insights. MessageDesk Website. https://snapdesk.app/text-messaging-statistics-facts-stats-insights. Updated January 19, 2020. Accessed March 31, 2021.
2 75% of U.S. consumers wish their healthcare experiences were more personalized, Redpoint Global survey reveals. BusinessWire Web site. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200218005006/en/75-of-U.S.-Consumers-Wish-Their-Healthcare-Experiences-Were-More-Personalized-Redpoint-Global-Survey-Reveals. Published February 18, 2020. Accessed March 30, 2021.
