4 Ways Data Integration Can Help You Serve Your Patients Better
As a healthcare professional, you’re familiar with the industry’s hectic nature and the tedious manual tasks that keep you from interacting with your patients. Data integration is, therefore, emerging as a key concept, one which is particularly important in the healthcare field — saving healthcare organizations valuable time and money.
Known for its innovation and advanced technology, the U.S. healthcare industry brought in an impressive US$ 2829.6 billion last year in estimated revenue.¹ As the healthcare sector is expected to grow further, so is the need for successful healthcare integration.
But why is data integration imperative in the healthcare industry?
Nurses and physicians feel the pressure of the job, daily. The need to multitask and be highly efficient, while trying to provide quality care to all patients.
For this to be possible, patient data needs to be accessible to physicians when they need it. At the same time, organizations and healthcare facilities are required to collaborate — work together to provide the best possible care outcomes for the patients.
Healthcare leaders, office managers, and doctors can pave the way for healthcare integration — creating efficiency, standardized workflows, and competitive partnerships among facilities.
Are there challenges and how do you go about data integration? Let’s find out.
Challenges of Healthcare Integration
While the majority of healthcare organizations acknowledge the need and benefit of data integration, some remain reluctant. Why?
One of the concerns brought forth includes ensuring patient data integrity and confidentiality — but moving data to one platform actually supports security efforts and narrows the focus to one system. This transitions organizations away from multiple platforms and moves them to one dedicated secure system.
Another concern is the lack of a standardized process for achieving data integration, which can seem a bit intimidating. However, with healthcare organizations so diverse in size and nature, data integration cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution.
While it’s easier to follow a predetermined path, defining your own will eventually lead to a more customized solution that is tailored to the needs of your organization.
(1) Solving Data Accessibility with Data Integration
Can you imagine how much healthcare data is generated every single day? Hospitals, doctors’ offices, virtual visits — all healthcare data is recorded and documented for valuable clinical insight. But how can we possibly reap the benefits and extract what we need without strategic data integration?
The truth is that about a third of the world’s total data volume is produced by the healthcare sector and by 2025, the compound annual growth rate for the healthcare industry is estimated to reach a whopping 36% — ahead of the manufacturing and financial services industries.²
Obviously, healthcare data is invaluable and allows us to document vital parameters for our patients. But with patients also seeing specialty providers and engaging with physicians outside of our network or area, the question remains how to effectively treat them when critical data is unavailable to you?
Well, the thing is: it doesn’t have to be unavailable.
Healthcare data, even that from different providers, should be viewed as a whole. A urologist, for example, should be able to send his patient to an imaging center for a local ultrasound without having to worry about whether or not he’ll be able to retrieve the ultrasound data.
At the same time, cancer patients should be able to get a second or third opinion prior to surgery without having to worry about whether or not their doctor will be able to access the data from their referring physician.
In a fluid healthcare setting, patient data should be available to any treating clinician when needed, making it an important factor in the equation of quality care. The key to gaining access to this data is data integration, which can unlock the full potential of great patient care.
(2) Improving the Patient Care Experience
Going hand-in-hand with data accessibility is the patient care experience and while clinicians greatly benefit from sharing critical patient data — especially if that entails an effortless cost-effective way—, the patient does too. Therefore, data integration is crucial for physicians and patients.
Data integration allows physicians and organizations to collaborate and support the patient’s treatment together.
Let’s be honest, there’s no one physician who can handle all of a patient’s needs. This means that collaboration is essential in every way in order to improve patient outcomes and provide an exemplary patient care experience.
The quality of services rendered, whether the care provided is reliable, and whether communication is easy, are all variables the patient takes into account when choosing and staying with a physician long-term.
Data integration connects multiple systems and allows clinics to share patient data so that physicians on either side have all the clinical data to properly address, evaluate, and treat any medical complaints their patients may have.
(3) Increasing Efficiency with Healthcare Integration
The thing with healthcare is that the job — while rewarding — can be physically demanding and requires a lot of multitasking. Manual tasks and outdated processes slow you down and don’t align with the digital landscape that has shaped the industry — which is why healthcare integration is imperative for your organization’s success.
What does that mean?
In an industry that prides itself on innovation and advanced technology, traditional processes can create inefficiencies and ultimately require more physical labor and healthcare dollars.
Healthcare integration supports systems to standardize and automate workflow processes and helps alleviate the burden carried by many of our healthcare staff.
Currently, a projection for the U.S. healthcare market estimates a grim shortfall of 3.2 million healthcare workers by 2026.³ With this intensifying staffing shortage, strategic automation and the development of efficient processes can yield positive results for both staff and patients.
(4) How Vivlio Health® Can Make Data Integration Your Reality
Vivlio Health is a cloud-based platform that can help you retrieve critical patient data so you can evaluate and treat your patients effectively and without delays. Data integration is a key aspect of our organization as we strive to increase data accessibility for physicians and patients alike.
With many clinicians on our team, we understand your desire to provide quality patient care but manual fax requests cause significant delays in obtaining your patient’s medical records. This means that despite your best intentions and efforts, there can be delays in evaluating and treating your patients.
At Vivlio Health we have worked hard to create a platform that supports easy and reliable communication between offices — collaborating on a big scale with outside facilities and vendors to provide you with access to your patient’s clinical data — in a cost-effective and efficient fashion.
With data integration at the forefront of our business, we aim to solve some of the most pressing issues in the healthcare industry:
- Make healthcare data more widely accessible, so that patients receive better care, while physicians save time and can work more effectively.
- Improve patient satisfaction by providing physicians with complete medical histories, so they can offer treatment promptly while boosting communication between patients and providers.
- Increasing workplace efficiency in healthcare organizations because we understand the stress many healthcare workers are under. Automating processes and transitioning away from outdated manual tasks can save you both time and money.
Vivlio Health is proud to be integrated with most of the big players in the industry, so we can make sure you have the data you need:
- Athenahealth
- eClinicalWorks
- Cerner
- Kareo
- Practice Fusion
- DrChrono
- AdvancedMD
- Allscripts
- RXNT
Ready to explore what data integration can do for your clinic? Reach out here to schedule a free demo and let’s chat!
References:
-
“Health Care & Social Assistance in the U.S. 2022 – Industry Insights & Data Analysis.” Statista, https://www.statista.com/study/15826/health-care-and-social-assistance-in-the-us/. Accessed 9 October 2023.
-
“The healthcare data explosion.” RBC Capital Markets, https://www.rbccm.com/en/gib/healthcare/episode/the_healthcare_data_explosion. Accessed 10 October 2023.
-
“US healthcare labor market.” Mercer, https://www.mercer.com/content/dam/mercer/assets/content-images/north-america/united-states/us-healthcare-news/us-2021-healthcare-labor-market-whitepaper.pdf. Accessed 10 October 2023.