Next Steps In Healthcare’s Digital Transformation

If your healthcare facility wasn’t already in the process of digitalization or already digitalized, Covid-19 has certainly accelerated your transformation. We’ve seen many new use cases for this digital transformation, for example clinical research associates having to access patient data remotely which was rarely done before, doctors offering remote visits and the list goes on. Now, we know that this transformation is necessary but what comes after? Is simply using digitizing files enough? Is moving all your patient data into an EHR system enough? Let’s break it down.

For the purpose of this exercise, let’s take the most common and necessary digital transformation in healthcare: Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs).

What is an EHR system (quickly…)?

An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is an electronic version of a patient’s medical history, that is maintained by the provider over time, and may include all of the key administrative clinical data relevant to that persons care under a particular provider, including demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports. It’s hard to believe that all this data was stored on paper documents for the longest time… 

The EHR automates access to information and has the potential to streamline the clinician’s workflow. The EHR also has the ability to support other care-related activities directly or indirectly through various interfaces, including evidence-based decision support, quality management, and outcomes reporting.

EHRs are a necessary step to improve the relationship between patients and clinicians. The data, and the timeliness and availability of it, will enable providers to make better decisions and provide better care.  

For example, the EHR can improve patient care by:

• Reducing the incidence of medical error by improving the accuracy and clarity of medical records.
• Making the health information available, reducing duplication of tests, reducing delays in treatment, and patients well informed to make better decisions.
• Reducing medical error by improving the accuracy and clarity of medical records.

Here is a list of EHR systems on the market:

• Epic
• Cerner
• AthenaHealth
• CareCloud
• GE Centricity
• eClinicalWorks
• NextGen
• Allscripts

It’s easy to see the value that these systems can bring upfront. However, there is so much more that can be done by harnessing integrations with emerging technologies particularly in artificial intelligence. 

“An EHR alone is insufficient to meet the demands of mass digitization and personalization of care.

It is instead a foundational capability that must connect to a richer tapestry of more modern digital health applications, systems, services, and devices that are necessary to deliver high-quality, affordable and patient centric-care.” – Gartner, 2020

This means that the data stored in your EHR system can be leveraged to greatly improve your daily operations at different levels:

• Accessing care: when the patient is searching, making contact or requiring pre-service
• Getting better: when the patient arrives, during service, or at discharge
• Sustaining health: during follow ups or maintenance

All three areas of the patient journey can benefit from a seamless integration between enhancing patient journey applications and your EHR.

Let’s dive into more specific use cases.

Improving access to care

Accessing the proper care can be challenging for patients. There is an abundance of information online and many service providers promising the best service but it’s not always easy to get a hold of them. 

The reason is simple – it’s expensive to answer people’s questions, especially 24/7/365.

With new technologies, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Advancements in artificial intelligence, particularly natural language understanding, have enabled software to understand humans and answer them. Using tools such as Botco.ai’s virtual agent software, you can build custom virtual assistants to answer your visitors questions, qualify them, and enter their information in your EHR all automatically.

Benefits:

• 24/7 support for a fraction of the cost
• Instant responses so your visitors find what they’re looking for faster
• Increase call deflection so you can spend more time on high value tasks
• Capture intake questions through web chat so you and your patients can save time
• Provide patient engagement without having to change your patient messaging habits 
• Higher patient conversion rates

 

Better process to sustain health

Keeping in touch with patients is difficult and making sure they take the right steps is even harder. You can email them but the chances of them seeing your email is low. You can call them but again, this is expensive. You can trust them to follow up with your facility which is not always the patient’s main concern or priority. All these options require a manual process that is very challenging to scale. At least if you have an EHR system in place, your agents can access patient data in seconds. What if the last mile could be handled by technology too?

By connecting your EHR system to your Botco.ai’s virtual assistant, you can automate the outreach using a combination of SMS, web chat and artificial intelligence. Here’s what the workflow could look like:

 

 

Now, you’re truly unlocking the power of data to personalize your patient journey experience at scale. Your virtual assistant won’t miss a patient, will assist each patient with the proper aftercare, and collect additional actionable data to ensure a better experience.

Benefits:

• Provide patient engagement without having to change your patient messaging habits 
• Lower aftercare cost
• Personalization at scale
• Improved patient experience

Conclusion

It’s time for healthcare facilities to think about the next steps in their digital transformation:

• Evaluate key areas of the patient journey that need improvement
• Invest in EHR and AI technologies and integrations such as virtual assistants to automate parts of the patient journey
• Transform your patient journey for the better
• Deliver a higher quality service while improving operational efficiency

If you’re interested in better understanding how to navigate through these different steps of your digital transformation process, please schedule a call with us and we’ll gladly help you and your business make the most out of your EHR data with AI-powered virtual assistants.