Your days are hectic, fast-paced and it’s all about your patients. With MACRA regulation, you’re pressured to improve your quality of care while also lowering costs and care has shifted from volume-based to value-based care. Your patient outcomes matter more than the number of patients you have coming in and out of your system. You have to understand that your patients are individuals at the end of the day.
Take a step outside of your own industry for a moment. Look at your own experience as a consumer of products. What experiences have shaped your expectations for service as a customer? Look over at a player in the retail space, CVS. CVS Health, a player in the retail clinic space, recognized that their consumers were open to receiving care from the same place they shopped. CVS now owns 50% of the retail clinic market share. Visiting a retail clinic instead of an emergency department has racked up cost savings totaling $4.4 billion. CVS looks at patients as individuals, they recognized that what motivates these same individuals in other areas don’t act in a silo of healthcare. Not only can they make appropriate recommendations for shopping they have insight on what motivates people to take charge of their health and are able to personalize health management of patient populations.
You have to understand that your patients are individuals at the end of the day.
I’ve pulled together a few ideas of how you can apply technology, specifically CRM (Customer Relationship Management Software) to improve your patient’s experience. The ideas suggested have delivered proven results for consumers- and have set the standard for customer experience. Those expectations don’t silo when they step into the healthcare space.
Deliver education and engage your patients with Patient Portals
Community Cloud
- 95% of patients experience benefits from engagement with their personal healthcare information online
- Incorporating a portal for your patients will result in an improvement of overall patient care, improved record tracking and increased office efficiency
Create a private patient portal to improve engagement with your patients and improve care collaboration with your care team. Create a space where communication flows two ways, and empower patients to take control of their own health. Make patient health information available to patients. Have one place where patients, families, caregivers and healthcare professional can work together on care.
Manage patient population and care coordination
Service Cloud
- 75% of those admitted to hospitals can’t identify the clinician responsible for their care
- The average Medicare patient sees 7 physicians across 4 different practices
Create a single view of data for caregivers and gain insight into patient activity. Brainstorm and collaborate on patient solutions with your care teams through a secure network. Gain visibility into your care team: know who’s who, who’s responsible for what, how they fit into the care plan.
Attract and Retain Patients with cross-channel Journeys
Marketing Cloud
- 86% of chronic disease is driving up health care spending. Shift focus to manage and prevent chronic disease
- 78% of patients want to learn nutritional information from their healthcare providers
Attract new patients with personalized communications. Take patients on tailored journeys that aim to educate and empower patients to make informed decisions. Be there at every step of a patient’s healthcare journey. Facilitate preventative health practices to manage populations.
HIPPA Privacy Rule: Stay vigilant in protecting PHI
Salesforce Shield
- Data breaches cost the healthcare field approximately $6.2 billion each year, with the average breach incurring $2.2 million and compromising 3,128 records per incident
Salesforce Shield is platform encryption. If you’re storing PHI, it is highly recommended that you get Shield. Salesforce Shield encrypts fields, custom fields, files, and attachments. HIPPA does not require data encryption, but it’s best practice to go the extra mile because encryption could become a HIPPA requirement in the future. You’ve already got core Salesforce security features that come with out-of-the-box Salesforce CRM, but making the investment to go beyond basic HIPPA requirements demonstrates that you have invested in protecting your data. This will go a long way in preventing severe corrective action in the case that you do get a data breach.
Care coordination and EHR integration
Health Cloud CRM
Gain a complete view of your patient with smarter patient management and a connected patient engagement based on context. Health Cloud CRM is essentially Service Cloud + Communities package in one, with an option to integrate your EHR. Health Cloud CRM holds a unique data model, and looks at patients as “individuals.”
Sources:
Hospitals & Health Networks
Healthcare Financial Management Association
