Each year, the RoundTable team book their flights for the annual HIMSS conference, and 2018 was not any different.  We were eager to get to the conference to meet new industry leaders and hear more about one of the conference’s main themes centered around the patient experience, which aligns perfectly with our Management Consulting service lines – Healthcare Customer Experience & Relationship Management (HCxRM) and Revenue Cycle Growth & Integrity.

As we attended multiple sessions and walked the show floor, we saw several trends and had six major takeaways:

1- Interoperability

  • The industry is experiencing interoperability issues which have spawned a whole host of middleware and interoperability vendors and consultants.
  • The true solution relies upon creating and enforcing healthcare standards within the software frameworks themselves instead of allowing health records companies to continue to develop proprietary software.

2- Technology, Data and Analytics…and what to do with it?

  • In the early days of the internet, websites had the same challenges we see in many of the healthcare software products today: They are created under the belief that more is better, which creates an overwhelmed end user.
  • These overly complicated products tend to be a result of the lack of clarity on how to use the technology and the data needed to provide useful analytics and visualizations.
  • The end result: Too many functions that do nothing, too many screens that are under utilized and too many graphs and charts that provide little to no meaningful or actionable intelligence.
  • The solution: Look past the clutter, focus on understanding the user/business/clinical/operational problems, and define a strategy on how to utilize the data and analytics.

3- Care Management/Pop Health and CRMs

  • It’s my opinion there will be a collision of these two products in the near future.
  • The reality is that these spaces overlap and the appropriate data served within a care management tool is useful within a CRM. More so, the data within a CRM is necessary within a Care Management tool if the care manager is to successfully contact patients (i.e. best method of contact, etc.)
  • It’s extremely valuable for this intel to be incorporated in the Care Management tools in order to contact patients for the right reason at the right time.

4- Mobile Solutions

  • In an attempt to treat patients as consumers, there are many vendors offering mobile solutions.
  • Apps, portals…. Nothing really revolutionary, however, it shows that the industry is headed in that direction.
  • More people search from their phone, rather than from their laptop; and now is the time to incorporate that consumer need into the healthcare industry.
  • The right app development is critical to engaging with consumers.

 5- Patient Financial Responsibility – The Revenue Cycle Experience

  • Due to HDHP’s and technology, patients are becoming more knowledgeable consumers who demand better communication, cost transparency, easy and convenient payment methods and plans, and easy & convenient scheduling/registration options.
  • Health systems are addressing these demands through revenue cycle operational/workflow redesign, improved customer service and partnering with vendors that provide services and technology to improve the overall patient experience as it relates to billing/payments.

6- The self-fulfilling prophecy that healthcare is too complex

  • Buyers realize that there are so many “solutions” and that some of them don’t solve their actual problems.
  • The majority of products have become cumbersome with too many clicks, too many screens – leading to long educational hours of determining the right screens and data needed.  And like all technology, by the time they get something they can use, a new update appears and changes it all.
  • Healthcare can be a difficult and complex industry. We all know that the software systems are lagging behind other industries; however, as experts, we need to realize that it’s a challenge we can overcome.  It’s time to take the leap and treat patients as consumers; and develop software systems that meet those demands.

We welcome you to contact us today to learn more about our Healthcare Consumer Experience & Relationship Management (HCxRM) and Revenue Growth & Integrity strategies as well as our team that can guide you in the right direction by emailing us at oursolutions@roundtablehit.com.

 

Experiences shared by Mike Schwob, Director of Management Consulting.