• Health Tech

The Healthcare Industry is Skyrocketing Into Digital Transformation

February 06, 2023

The pace of digital transformation is accelerating as healthcare organizations face competition from retail healthcare options offered by pharmacy chains. This includes telehealth, remote patient monitoring, electronic health record systems, and hospital-at-home programs. Digital transformation will continue to be essential for healthcare organizations to keep up with the convenience and investment in technology that retail health is participating in.

Retail pharmacies offer remote patient monitoring and telehealth services, hospital-at-home programs, and electronic health record systems typically as a supplement to their ecommerce site or retail store. 

Southcoast Health implemented telehealth services to meet the demand for touchless doctor appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic in a matter of days. Utilizing Microsoft Teams, they accelerated the unprecedented speed of digital transformation in their healthcare organization during the pandemic, enabling advanced workflows and collaboration across service lines.

In December 2021, Southcoast merged 37 small call centers into one operation with a single dedicated management team and a suite of new technologies. Before our merger, Southcoast’s fragmented approach to call center operations led to inconsistent performance and patient experience. Service metrics were not consistently met — only 30-40% of calls were answered within the first 30 seconds.

Southcoast Health, a healthcare organization based in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, has implemented tools from Avaya and Epic’s EHR integration to improve the experiences of both patients and providers.

The tools are intended to help counteract staff burnout, which has become pervasive in the healthcare industry.

Texas Children’s implemented Microsoft Teams to support operational demands and collaboration during the pandemic. In 2021, the hospital scheduled more than 1 million appointments online, with 700,000 patients accessing scheduling and care via Epic’s MyChart patient portal. Teams enabled greater collaboration and communication across employee and physician groups via video, text chat, and Teams channels.

Teams helped increase collaboration and communication across the organization by giving employees and physicians a way to chat with one another.

John Hamm, Texas Children’s Hospital’s Vice President of IT, emphasizes that effective digital transformation requires more than just the latest technology.

The organization rolled out agile methodology training to IT leaders and executives, leading to better milestone management and releasing new technology every two weeks.

When Donna Roach joined as CIO at the University of Utah Health during the pandemic, she led an effort to create a new digital transformation roadmap. The plan contains six “swim lanes,” including goals such as digital outreach and improving consumer experience—all focusing on patient-centered care.

To standardize its telehealth offerings, Roach had to sell the concepts internally before implementing them.

 

A 2021 survey by Accenture documented increased investments in digital transformation in healthcare organizations. 

92% of healthcare executives believe that “technology democratization” is critical to innovation. Meaning moving technology into all parts of the organization.

81% of healthcare executives say the pace of digital change is growing in their organizations. And that 66% expect their investment in intelligent digital twins to increase over the next three years.

There is no doubt that the pandemic has changed our healthcare systems, but healthcare IT leaders are innovating on how to move towards a more digital health experience to meet future demands.