The healthcare environment is complicated, with many operational barriers that significantly impact patient care experiences, clinician productivity, and population health. Issues such as staff shortages, compliance problems with medical devices, and poor patient meal-delivery services are some of the behind-the-scenes challenges faced by healthcare facilities.
Disparate systems lead to disconnected experiences. Healthcare providers often scramble through multiple apps to access information, and patients experience inefficiencies when requesting services. While technology integration in healthcare, particularly electronic health records (EHRs), has revolutionized patient data management, operational efficiency remains a concern for many healthcare providers. A report by McKinsey1 states that 42% of a nurse’s current shift involves activities that could be simplified through technology. Much time is spent manually updating and filling out clinical documentation, which can be automated.
Despite 60% of health systems employing over 50 unique software solutions for healthcare operations, many of these investments lack seamless integration with the most crucial technology—the patient record.
Without enterprise-wide interoperability between the patient record and other systems, several issues can arise:
- Care team burnout: Inefficient processes, lack of interdepartmental collaboration, and absence of medical-device compliance regulations lead to stress and reduced job satisfaction, affecting the quality of care and ultimately impacting the overall healthcare experience and population health.
- Loss of productivity: Navigating disparate systems and operational silos can be challenging without coordination and collaboration across different departments and systems. This results in care teams struggling to provide the right care due to noncompliant medical devices, insufficient supplies, and non-automated technologies. Providers spend more time looking for information in fragmented systems, lowering productivity, reducing efficiency, and increasing costs.
- Care team dissatisfaction: Inefficient medical devices and processes, coupled with a lack of transparent access to patient information, lead to frustration and stress among care teams. Nobody is happy when care providers have to deal with inefficiencies, hindering their ability to perform their jobs effectively.
- Patient safety risks: Challenges faced by care teams can result in delays in treatment plans for patients. Refining operational processes can reduce the potential for errors in dispensing medication and creating treatment plans, keeping healthcare providers updated to make more informed, data-driven decisions.
What if there was a way to address each of these operational challenges by providing a unified portal experience to seamlessly integrate diverse systems?
ServiceNow offers a healthcare service management solution that eliminates silos, improves efficiency for care teams and patients alike, and facilitates the flow of information for increased accuracy. With easy access to complete data, providers are less likely to make errors when communicating treatment plans, and patients are less likely to experience delays.
Implementing this type of operational efficiency does not require a complete replacement of your EHR or system solution. ServiceNow technology is designed to enhance, not replace, your current IT investments.
Today’s patients are also consumers, and their experience as consumers has realigned their expectations for healthcare. They want quick access to answers and information without navigating multiple systems and reentering the same information in a confusing array of forms. Clinicians and facilities need better, more consistent ways to access patient information, communicate proactively, and keep patients up to date.
Fragmented architecture can fuel poor patient experiences and negatively impact satisfaction with healthcare services. Patients can be misinformed about their treatment plans and experience unexpected delays and inefficiencies. For healthcare organizations, improving the patient experience means more than just doing the right thing for people who need care. In the U.S., patient satisfaction scores are an increasingly important factor in some reimbursement paradigms. The good news is that overcoming the technical hurdles that compromise patient experience and consolidating siloed data sources can lead to more efficient processes, lower costs, and a higher quality of care.
1McKinsey & Company, Reimagining the nursing workload: Finding time to close the workforce gap, May 26, 2023
