Over the last two years, healthcare organizations have been forced to become more agile and dynamic. For ongoing healthcare transformation to be successful, however, organizational agility must become the norm — not the exception.
During a roundtable sponsored by Oracle at the Becker's Hospital Review 12th Annual Meeting, two executives from Oracle Health — Sarah Matt, MD, vice president healthcare markets, and Stephanie Trunzo, senior vice president and general manager — facilitated a discussion about the role that data and analytics can play in new operating models:
Four key learnings:
- The pandemic created greater focus for healthcare organizations. One participant noted, "The pandemic enabled us to focus on our business, our data, and our care." For many health systems during the pandemic, one key area of focus has been telehealth adoption." Telehealth was not invented in the last two years," Ms. Trunzo said. "It's been on the radar for healthcare organizations but the incentive to prioritize and focus on it wasn't there until the pandemic unlocked it. The hard part isn't technology, it's the ability to prioritize it." The pandemic also shined a spotlight on and exacerbated the workforce crisis.
- To address the war for talent, health systems are structuring work in new ways. "If we're not thinking about the gig economy, automation, and human connection, we are going to be DOA in the next five years," said the chief people officer at one healthcare organization in attendance. "Employees are ready for gig work, side hustles, and less than 12-hour shifts."
To strengthen their talent pipelines, many health systems are creating career development programs, partnering with high schools and universities, and developing unique workforce development programs. According to Dr. Matt, "It's hard for hospitals to compete against Target's $24 per hour wage, but they can provide career paths that aren't available in retail." A health system in Washington state, for example, has partnered with Amazon on an innovative workforce program. Rather than lay off employees due to warehouse automation, Amazon is paying workers to train as medical assistants and ushering them into health system jobs.
- Hospital-at-home programs are gaining momentum. The pandemic motivated health systems to experiment with more home-based care initiatives. A roundtable participant described how her health system with a network of hospitals, clinics, and home services in three midwestern states now discharges 85 percent of total joint patients to their homes on the day of surgery. "We put a navigator in place and have the ability to securely FaceTime with patients," the participant said. "The physicians love it because it makes their day more efficient. They don't have to round in the hospitals in the morning and do discharges."
Another participant described how during the last COVID-19 surge, his health system that owns its own ambulance company discharged patients home with high-flow oxygen and had community paramedics conduct home checks. "This was our first foray into hospital at home, because we needed those beds for higher-acuity patients. Leveraging the paramedics made hospitalists and patients more comfortable," the participant said.
- Oracle Health is committed to creating human-centric experiences powered by global unified data. Most healthcare challenges fall into one of two categories. As Ms. Trunzo explained, "Either organizations are taking a system-centric approach, rather than a human-centric one, or they aren't transforming data into insights. Our mission is to bring those two things together." Oracle Health's goal is to be a partner for positive outcomes, not merely a technology vendor.
For more information, visit Oracle Healthcare here.