By Brian Fugere, Chief Product Officer at symplr.
The healthcare industry today continues to face significant, ongoing challenges, including low-to-negative margins, clinician burnout and shortages, competitive pressures, and an excess of siloed software solutions.
To thrive rather than just survive amid these threats, health systems can leverage enterprise-level operations solutions that provide consistent experiences for providers, administrative staff and patients. Other industries have seen the impact of enterprise solutions, from accounting software to project management and e-commerce platforms.
I’ve spent more than 20 years as a senior executive leader and product manager at startup, growth, enterprise and turn-around organizations—and currently as the chief product officer of a company that provides healthcare operations solutions. Through my experience in product management and software development across industries, I’ve seen firsthand the toll that non-optimized, siloed technology can take on operational efficiency and revenue. Healthcare is no different. I believe that streamlined and consistent enterprise operations are the future of the healthcare industry.
Health systems that follow in the footsteps of tech and e-commerce to implement consolidated solutions that incorporate more of their operational needs can have a leg up across the organization, from improving financial margins to reducing worker burnout and ensuring regulatory compliance.
The Benefits Of Enterprise Solutions
1. Streamlined Tasks And Reduced Burnout
The American Hospital Association (AHA) predicts that America will face a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2033 and will need to hire at least 200,000 new nurses per year to meet demand. While many healthcare workers are leaving the workforce due to reaching retirement age, many others are retiring early or switching professions due to burnout.
The epidemic of burnout among healthcare workers is often driven by system inefficiencies, administrative burdens, and increased regulatory and technology requirements. Alleviating some of the administrative burdens on healthcare workers through consolidated and consistent healthcare operations solutions can free up more time for patient care and reduce clinician burnout.
2. Standardized Consumer Experiences
Inefficient and siloed technology has an impact on patients as well as clinicians. Many healthcare providers today offer sub-optimal consumer experiences driven by a lack of personalization, siloed and disjointed systems, and a lack of consumer-centric data.
Enterprise solutions that improve and standardize consumer experiences can help organizations evolve their operations to be more consumer-driven. This change is much needed, as providing frictionless patient experiences throughout patients’ entire care journey is critical to improving both patient engagement and care outcomes as well as the health systems’ financial outlooks.
3. Improved Economics And Higher Leverage
The past few years have proven that healthcare is no longer “recession-proof.” While margins have improved slightly since last year’s record downturn, health systems are still pressed to cut costs and do more with less. McKinsey analysts have described healthcare’s financial outlook as a “gathering storm” and say that at-scale innovation and technology enablement will be key to health systems turning headwinds into tailwinds.
Centralized, enterprise-level purchasing and operations can help health systems to thrive amid these financial challenges. Health systems must pick and choose the vendor partners they continue doing business with, and those vendor partners need to facilitate exceptional, near-immediate returns on investment. I think the vendors that can transcend transactional relationships to provide high-yield, enterprise-level solutions and become true partners for the long term will stand out from the crowd while making a significant positive impact on the quality and quantity of care health systems are able to provide.
Best Practices For Implementing Enterprise Solutions
For business leaders who are just getting started with implementing enterprise-level operation solutions, there are several key pieces of advice to keep in mind.
First and foremost, it is crucial to thoroughly evaluate your business’ specific needs and goals before implementing any solutions. Understand the pain points and inefficiencies within your current operations, and identify the areas that can benefit the most from streamlined processes or automation.
Once you have a clear understanding of your objectives, conduct thorough research on available solutions in your current inventory and in the market. Look for reputable vendors with a proven track record in delivering enterprise-level solutions. Take the time to evaluate their features, scalability, security measures and integration capabilities to ensure they align with your business requirements.
Of course, any new endeavor will come with challenges. Some of the main challenges that business leaders may encounter are effectively training staff (change management!) on the new technology and scaling the technology as the business grows to ensure it continues to meet the evolving needs of the business.
To meet these challenges, I’d recommend starting small and prioritizing incremental improvements rather than attempting a full-scale transformation all at once. Begin with a pilot project or a specific department to test the solution’s effectiveness, and gather feedback before rolling it out across the entire organization. This iterative approach allows for adjustments, mitigates potential risks or disruptions to the business, and develops internal champions that can evangelize the new solution.
Furthermore, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement is essential. Encourage feedback from employees, and create channels for open communication to identify further opportunities for optimization and enhancements (more change management!).
Investing in education and training can also help you to bridge the knowledge gap and ensure that business leaders and employees have the necessary skills to adopt and leverage the solutions effectively.
Why Consolidation Is Key
Centralized enterprise purchasing rather than siloed or department-level purchasing can optimize healthcare operations through vendor-partner consolidation, improved economics and higher leverage. Rather than focusing on shiny new point solutions that carry high costs and don’t integrate with existing solutions and processes as well as they should, health system leaders can shift their focus to enterprise solutions.
Consolidating vendors and forming and leveraging relationships with a few trusted and high-value strategic partners enables health systems to improve their efficiency, engagement and financial stability, ultimately leading to better patient care and better outcomes. By taking a proactive approach to technology training and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, business leaders can successfully navigate the implementation of enterprise-level operation solutions.
Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Read the full article here
