symplr hosted a rousing executive roundtable discussion at the recent Becker’s 14th Annual Meeting in Chicago. I had the opportunity to lead a discussion on how health systems are innovating to achieve better healthcare operations in 2024 and beyond, in which two dozen clinical and operations leaders participated.
Some of the Health systems represented included Advocate Health, Ascension, Banner Health, Beth Israel Lahey Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Cooper Health, Kaiser Permanente, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Providence Health, and UPMC.
Health operations software: growing in importance
We highlighted that healthcare operations software as a category is growing in importance. These are a neglected set of processes and products for healthcare organizations’ back-office operations that are not overseen by enterprise resource planning (ERP), electronic health record (EHR), or revenue cycle management software.
IT market watchers and consultancies, such as KLAS Research, with its recent Healthcare Operations 2023 study, are now covering this class of solutions, citing the massive efficiency gains and impact possible on both clinical outcomes and financial performance.
Additionally, the results of symplr’s 2023 Compass Survey reported on what hundreds of IT and clinical leaders believed are the greatest threats to their organizations. Prior to presenting the survey results, we also asked the audience their opinions on these same questions. Both the 2023 survey and roundtable participants reported that workforce threats – burnout and staffing challenges – slightly outpaced financial pressures as the number one concern. Both the roundtable audience and the Compass Survey results identified that the top areas of IT investment in their institution were, not surprisingly, workforce and talent management, as well as clinician staffing and scheduling.
Where health systems are innovating
We then asked the audience to identify areas where health systems were innovating or developing methods of improving healthcare operations performance. Roundtable participants shared a number of approaches, including AI and machine learning:
- A major Catholic health system shared that they have begun experimenting with basic robotic process automation (RPA) to automate small tasks in finance. The executive also indicated that to provide better operational visibility, her team of several dozen delivers a daily operational analytics report to executives, “aggregating hundreds of different data files from ERP, EHR and revenue cycle systems,” to help guide decision-making.
- A multi-state hospital chain in the west and northwest has deployed an automated patient-facing follow-up questionnaire to simplify the process of gathering data on HEDIS metrics, “taking 90% of this work off the clinicians.”
- Another health system reported they take redirect work from physicians (both radiologists and PCPs) using a tool that scans images using AI and identifies and facilitates the documentation of non-cancerous findings that nonetheless need follow up. The software tool triages these findings and creates follow-up actions for mid-levels to schedule appointments.
- A hospital chief nursing officer reported that in line with saving clinicians’ time, the team is engaged in a major project to reengineer order sets, which had been built five years ago and were rarely updated. The redesign includes order updated with new care protocols and simplified data entry.
- Consistent with the Compass Survey, several health systems said they were experimenting with advanced scheduling capabilities and incentives management. One health system is experimenting with predictive staff scheduling to improve efficiency. Another is evaluating an application to manage and assess when to offer premium shift incentives on a case-by-case basis. Another organization is looking to provide more transparency in how they handle contingent labor needs.
Innovation through application rationalization, optimization, & software acquisition
The topic switched to how health systems are changing their software evaluation and purchasing processes and whether and when buying a new piece of was the ‘right’ way to innovate. Many attendees indicated they were in the middle of enterprise application rationalization, which includes:
- Inventorying software under contract
- Understanding which systems are in use and which are unused
- Evaluating and optimizing software-backed processes that offer potential efficiencies
One leader from a mid-Atlantic health system indicated that their organization was focused on application rationalization. They are evaluating a central workforce management system and recently identified that while this software has modest functional capabilities, it will be replaced because of total ownership costs and consequent drag on their annual budget. In some cases, it is easier to bring in newer technology, this leader indicated.
Several leaders mentioned something I heard repeatedly when I participated in a panel at ViVE Many organizations have mandated a practice of reviewing new software requests against incumbent software vendors that offer a broad portfolio. They prefer fewer vendors, and they look first to trusted partners for new functionality and IT. The recommendation? Ask current partners to work with them and review their software portfolio regularly to reduce the risk of buying a point solution from a new vendor with a limited portfolio that may create technical debt.