With the world in the early stages of COVID-19 vaccine deployment, it’s important to look even further ahead — specifically, how we can keep the momentum going on the digital transformation of healthcare.
A recent roundtable discussion of CIOs from leading health systems, hosted by Harvard Business Review, concluded there are three main areas of focus for this new digital health frontier: Virtual care, setting, and the patient experience.
“Care providers must understand the ramifications for their digital health function and agenda — and how information technology can address the challenges and opportunities of their ‘new normal,’” wrote a team of experts for HBR, including: John Glaser (executive in residence, Harvard Medical School), J. Marc Overhage, MD (Chief Medical Information Officer, Anthem, Inc.), Janet Guptill (CEO, Scottsdale Institute), Chuck Appleby (Director of Publications & Communications, Scottsdale Institute), and Donald Trigg (President, Cerner).
The first focus — virtual care — comes into play simply because of the numbers, and how quickly solutions had to be implemented. The panel of experts cites one McKinsey study that shows physicians and healthcare professionals are seeing 50 to 175 times more patients by telehealth. As a result, they explain, “health systems must construct a sturdy, permanent bridge that includes organizational, financial, and clinical structures and processes.”
The second focus is on setting, more specifically on patient care being delivered in the most appropriate setting. One example they give is the increasing discussion around chronic care management from the patient’s home, via telehealth or virtual doctor visits.
The final focus relates to patient experience, and how to make digital health align with the quality and efficiency they’ve come to know from other services like Amazon or Uber. According to the roundtable, it comes down to ease-of-use.
“To meet these expectations, health systems will need to double down on their ‘digital front door’ efforts,” they explain, “enabling patients to handle routine interactions such as scheduling an appointment, paying a bill, finding a doctor, renewing a medication, finding answers to health questions, and navigating the health system itself.”
The opportunity is there to create an even better ‘new normal’ than previous healthcare systems, the roundtable concluded.
“Covid-19 has forced health care leaders and clinicians to move faster, work smarter, and take a more focused approach to decision-making than ever before.”
Want to read the whole analysis? Head to HBR.