Extracting value from data can help improve clinical workflows and outcomes.
But to date, use of data has been largely focused on a limited set of clinical use cases. Opportunities exist to use data more broadly and effectively in clinical decision-making, which is critical in supporting value-based care.
In a Becker's Hospital Review webinar sponsored by OmniLife, Brian Cruddas, operations administrator for transplant at Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville, and Jesse Roach, MD, chief medical officer for CVS Kidney Care, discussed how digital solutions can help providers accelerate the shift to value-based care, including in complex areas such as caring for patients with chronic kidney disease.
Four key takeaways were:
1. Despite widespread EHR adoption, most clinical workflows remain manual, fragmented and reactive. Use of data in healthcare has been largely focused on specific clinical use cases, such as skin cancer analysis in dermatology. But there are many other clinical uses, such as remote diagnostics, radiology, cardiology and genomics, where data is not being used as effectively as it could be. "Opportunities exist to support clinical decision-making, but we need to intentionally collect data for this purpose," Mr. Cruddas said.
2. Digital solutions like automated clinical workflows offer advantages for providers. "Over the last couple of years, we've seen the great resignation and higher degrees of staff burnout," Mr. Cruddas said. "The more that we can automate and offload from staff, the more we give them flexibility. Investing in clinical automation tools is a way of caring for our staff." This can give healthcare organizations a competitive edge in the current labor market.
3. Digital solutions support value-based care outcomes. Meeting data reporting requirements and lowering administrative and operating costs is key, Mr. Cruddas said.
A CVS Health initiative focuses on kidney health, instead of kidney disease and kidney care. Dr. Roach explained that the goal is to catch this hidden disease early (nine of 10 adults with kidney disease don't even know they have it), prevent progression and keep patients at home and out of the hospital as much as possible. "Finding those patients and detecting it early can save a lot of money and a lot of heartache and mortality and morbidity," Dr. Roach said.
CVS Kidney Care is integrating with CVS Health assets to build an omni-channel network to care for patients at home. "Our approach is centering on upstream and value-based care, novel dialysis technology and digital solutions," Dr. Roach said. "Early identification, education and new digital solutions are critical to supporting the whole patient. Equity is a core to the solution and coordination is key."
4. To buy or to build? The Mayo Clinic Florida has built one digital solution for managing complex care workflows and has partnered with OmniLife on a second. The latter is focused on distilling multiple transplant workflows into one seamless workflow. "Connecting with our transportation vendor, connecting with our team that's going to go out and do the procurement, coordinating things on the transplant center side to get the recipient ready in setup — those were very disparate processes," Mr. Cruddas said. "Partnering with OmniLife is helping consolidate all of those functions into one workflow."
Workflow automation is one of the key strategies that providers can use to succeed in the digital age. Not participating in the digital age is no longer an option.
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