Terra Nova: Entering The Era Of Patient-Centric Healthcare IT

One way or another, healthcare IT will shift from the service-centric approach to the patient-centric one, most likely with CRM as its tech core.

By Natallia Babrovich, Business Analyst at ScienceSoft

The healthcare world innovates according to its own rules, transforming cautiously and gradually. Therefore, although we shouldn’t wait for this to happen today or even tomorrow, the service-centric healthcare IT will be eventually replaced by the patient-centric approach.

Other industries underwent this change about 10 to 20 years ago, so caregivers have the privilege to embrace their experience and avoid major pitfalls on the way. While the service-centric healthcare IT was built around EHR, the transition will most likely be rooted in some other system. We anticipate the coming of the CRM healthcare era.

Post-EHR Era: Why CRM

As care delivery focuses on patients, their engagement, outcomes, and satisfaction, the main system should be able to get beyond EHR-based health overviews. CRM was made to tackle this challenge, as it can integrate data from various dispersed clinical systems and shape it into a holistic patient profile with the following elements:

• Communication history (gathered across all channels such as the EHR, patient mobile apps, medical apps, patient portals and more)
• PGHD (available from mobile patient applications and patient portals)
• Patient behavior outline (compiled from both EHR and CRM data, includes an individual’s engagement level, lifestyle, analysis of tests and appointments frequency)
• Patient income level and insurance information (kept in the healthcare CRM itself)
• Patient health record (particular data retrieved from the EHR when needed)
• Patient needs prediction (defined inside the CRM via a variety of algorithms forecasting the relevant set of services for a particular patient. For example, a caregiver can anticipate the need and offer a female patient a “woman health” bundle, if she didn’t come for appointments and checks for a long time)
• Patient experience improvement strategy (patient’s feedback-based element, allowing caregivers to identify and eliminate any interaction gaps, also within the healthcare CRM realm)

Using this CRM-molded multifaceted patient profile, providers can combine the traditional healthcare “caregiving first” approach with salespeople’s “perception first” credo to interact with patients from both patient-treatment and customer-service sides.

Benefits Of The Patient-Centric Era

Apart from a full compliance with the main objectives of the value-based care delivery, CRM-driven communication allows caregivers to reach a number of essential goals:

• patient engagement
• systematic care
• reduced readmissions
• improved health outcomes
• increased patient loyalty

Accordingly, these goals positively affect population health and reimbursements, which certainly makes the new approach even more beneficial for providers.

If you have any opinions on the place of CRM in the healthcare IT landscape, please don’t hesitate to address them in comments.