If we all go to “Complete the Phrases” contest – 90% of us would like to complete “Health Care Delivery with Affordable“, “Costs with Efficient or Ultra-Low” and “Quality with World-Class“. As Care-Seeker we would want a World-Class Healthcare delivery which is affordable and preferably ultra-low cost.
[pullquote]As a Health Care provider – *this is a challenge – keeping yourself Cost Efficient and equally maintaining the standards and quality of health care. Of many Levers which let you sustain the “Low Cost, but World Class Healthcare” scenario – Technology plays an important role.[/pullquote]
Before addressing the spirit of the blog-title, let’s look at health care providers’ endeavor towards world-class delivery of health care services. How do they do it?
Our Sister Organization, 366Pi Consulting, consults health care providers and hospitals. There they found that – Hospital Administration was continuously trying to protect wastage of the system without compromising on quality standards. Priorities and Focus of Health Care centers were to make their operation cost-efficient, continuously optimize inventory and deploy some great strategies to upskill the workforce without any significant more investments. The process related improvements was an ongoing activity with every passing month. We helped Consulting team to deliver on Technology related innovations utilizing our Health1 apps built on the Salesforce platform enabling healthcare providers to address both scale and volume. With doctor-starved countries like India, facilitation and adoption of technology become even more important.
Health1 app, allows recording of the diagnosis process; simplifying the routine treatment process and help to monitor follow-up care. Health1 helped health care providers to get localized for Indian scenarios and we observed an increased engagement between the care-seeker and provider. With the absence of Primary Health Care centers, learning to use Health1 – created a trusted channel between the care-seekers and providers. Patients and care-seeker were eventually more aware of the treatment and preventions and hence, closing the communication gap which was getting created because of missing immediate attention.
Doctors and Physicians in health care centers have to manage a huge volume of patients and at times leading to even less-than-a-minute attention per patients. On the very moment, where Doctor has to prescribe the treatment – the old reports which you thought were not important are requested to be produced by a Consulting Physician. Thanks to Health1 built on Salesforce which can store medical images on the secured cloud. Physicians were empowered and efficient. Physicians can then read medical images remotely/real-time and discuss the findings with their patients.
With the use of Health1 apps, it reduced the barrier of treatments. Apps eventually led to larger patient volume to the health care center with better patient satisfaction levels. One important customization brought in the app was around the scheduling of an appointment and managing the associated workflow. The doctors and physicians were often attending the emergency services leading to the last-minute changes to the schedule and even cancellation of an appointment – leading to annoyed Patient experience. This custom new feature allowed the health care provider to manage their dynamic changing schedule and utilize the collaborative platform to keep up with the status on appointments with Patients.
For another health care provider, Health1 built on Salesforce helped their Psychiatrists Department to drive appointments and communication over a web-based interface and tablets. It was a self-service process where Patients, themselves, could create an online appointment and consult a doctor online – following up with chatter communications for tracking & monitoring progress. Health1 let the particular healthcare provider manage the delivery of health care services. Health Care provider could eventually become specialists in relatively rare subspecialties of medicine.
As a health care provider, non-adoption of Technology could be a serious misstep. In this era where there’s a need for Mass Production of Healthcare services, you would need to innovate on – Process and Technology – simultaneously. You would need a three-fold strategize to make sure a world-class delivery of health care services –
- It has to be both a Top-down and bottom-up approach,
- The health care provider should be clear with growth and reach strategies and
- Yes, Skill upliftment and training should be an integral part
Health1 and Salesforce could let you have a sustainable strategy and build on an approach where tasks are clearly identified and delegated to the right roles. When done right – efficiency and productivity improvement with Physicians is the most important gratification. Connect to us to find out more on our offerings around Health1. We are helping health care providers improve by improving physicians productivity and promoting innovations that suit the local conditions.