Digital transformation is long overdue for many healthcare organizations and for the industry as a whole — but important barriers are stalling progress.
During Becker's Hospital Review's 7th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Annual Meeting, in a session sponsored by Verato, Jason Bihun, senior vice president for growth at Verato, led a roundtable discussion exploring challenges health systems face on their digital transformation journey and effective steps to overcome those obstacles.
Four key insights were:
1. Digital transformation is challenged by siloed systems, data, processes and workflows. There are many ways to think about digital transformation, but one critical lens through which healthcare leaders view it is the lens of fragmentation. "The underlying technology that's supposed to facilitate digital transformation is still disconnected. There are also people and processes that you have to affect in order to do digital transformation," Mr. Bihun said.
One roundtable participant observed that even organizations that are well along on their digital transformation journey are facing the challenge of connecting patient-generated data to their broader ecosystem. "Digital transformation has extended the frontier of where silos are met," he said. "We need to make sure that patient data is part of a cumulative record."
2. EHR system design clashes with newer systems that contain other data assets. Another challenge to executing digital transformation is figuring out how to integrate CRM platforms and other systems that collect social determinants of health data — elements that "modernize and engage with the patient," as Mr. Bihun put it — with EHR systems. "How do we accomplish both of these things: integrate into a single platform and at the same time include data that is missing by design?" a participant asked.
3. Organizations are implementing various initiatives to address fragmentation. Building a robust data governance structure can be a useful approach to consolidating the disparate data systems used by provider organizations. For example, a data governance framework that can "translate" language and documentation that are used differently into a common clinical and IT vernacular can be instrumental in driving data, strategy and resource allocation.
Other approaches to ensuring a seamless patient experience and an integrated vision of a patient's health status include creating a unified consumer portal, expanding and unifying online appointment scheduling and leveraging technology to engage with patients beyond surveys and questionnaires to discover their likes, dislikes and preferences.
4. Optimizing patient identity is a gateway to streamlining digital transformation. While hospitals and health systems are trying different approaches to break down siloes and accelerate digital transformation, one fundamental issue must be addressed to truly spur momentum: the issue of the back-end technologies and repositories of information that underlie patient-facing touch points being themselves fragmented.
"It's not a very cohesive experience underneath as far as the data is involved," Mr. Bihun said, noting that the absence of a straightforward way to verify patient or employee identity compounds the problem. "Verato was built around the notion of easing that pain by providing a single source of truth that helps you understand who your user is."