It took so many years and so much effort to digitize health records and build the modern EHR that it can be tempting to think that the hard work of collecting and sharing necessary information about patients is done.
The bad news is that the work isn’t over – not even close. The good news is that, thanks to advancements in technology, the task of assembling a complete picture of patients will not take nearly as long as the digitization of health records did. The even better news is that when it is complete, this 360-degree view of patients will allow providers to deliver more individualized and effective care.
While EHRs are increasingly sophisticated and interoperable, they still do not contain all the information providers need to know about their patients. In many cases, EHRs do not even have all the medical data. Data silos still dot the information landscape, making it difficult for providers to get a comprehensive medical view of patients. And, while the industry is making great strides toward interoperability, it’s apparent that medical data provides only part of the information providers need to deliver the best care while addressing the bigger issues of population health, value-based care and costs.
The Customer 360 view
Healthcare is waking up to the fact that patients are more than just their conditions, lab results and medical histories. They’re complex individuals whose health is affected by many other circumstances, not all of which are found in EHRs: employment, income, zip code, race, gender, family issues, stress, and more. They want more choice and autonomy in their healthcare journey.
And patients are demanding to be seen as whole individuals by their providers. They’ve been conditioned by other industries such as banking and retail to expect that their providers know their habits and preferences. Offering this same level of familiarity requires providers to have a 360-degree view of patients, one compiled from multiple sources.
Some of these data sources are medical, like EHRs, labs and pharmacies, but not all. Others might come from a hospital’s customer relationship management system or government programs. In aggregate, these sources provide a complete and accurate longitudinal view of the patient journey that lets providers create a personalized, highly intuitive and engaged experience across the care continuum.
Trusted data is the foundation
The 360-degree view must be built upon a sturdy foundation of patient and provider identity. To deliver the best possible care, maximize patient engagement, and support patient acquisition and retention strategies for growth, healthcare organizations need a complete and unified view of patients and their entire care journeys.
That’s particularly challenging at a time when systems are collecting, sorting and analyzing data from more sources than ever before. In this avalanche of data, it’s easy for healthcare organizations to lose track of critical information, even entire patients.
A healthcare master data management (hMDM) solution not only assigns the right data to the right patient, but can assemble the 360-degree view that informs healthcare decisions. This technology bridges the gap between systems of record, systems of experience and systems of insight, allowing healthcare organizations to truly know who is who at every touchpoint. This allows them to:
- Achieve a complete and accurate longitudinal view of a person, aggregating high-fidelity consumer, patient and provider data across disparate system silos.
- Deliver personalized care experiences that exceed patient expectations while improving outcomes, efficiency and retention.
- Enable care providers to take the best next action, minimizing the risk of medical errors and allowing for personalized care plans.
- Support responsible deployment of AI based on high-fidelity data training sets, driving more accurate and trusted results.
- Equip front-office teams with accurate, up-to-date patient information, creating better patient experiences and care gap closures in call centers and other patient touchpoints.
- Empower marketing leaders to execute more personalized, effective campaigns, increasing patient outreach and driving growth.
The promise and peril of AI
Where does AI fit into this? It has unmatched potential to revolutionize the clinical and administrative aspects of healthcare. Its impact already is being felt from radiology labs to revenue cycle operations. It can be tempting when presented with a technology as promising as AI to put it to work everywhere as quickly as possible. But that would be a mistake. While AI undoubtedly will improve medicine in many ways, its failings also are well-known, including conjuring up “hallucinations” in response to user queries. These errors could be extremely harmful for providers and patients.
For that reason it is important that AI work with only reliable, verifiable data. The old computer adage “garbage in, garbage out” is every bit as relevant for AI as it was back in the early programming days of COBOL and Fortran. Health systems and other organizations must ensure their data is as clean as possible. Here, too, an hMDM solution can prevent the sort of errors that lead AI astray.
Conclusion
Providers must evolve their strategies for managing patient relationships. Success in the new era of healthcare requires not only knowing who the patient is but having a deep, reliable understanding of their entire journey. This unified, consumer-driven approach to 360-degree identity management creates personalized experiences that drive better health outcomes as well as business growth.
About Dipul Patadia MD, MBA
Dr. Patadia is a practicing emergency medicine physician and serves as the Head of Health System Strategy and Innovation at Salesforce where he aids in contextualizing health systems’ needs with new and existing technology capabilities. Before joining Salesforce, Patadia came from Ascension and Advocate Health where he served as a Chief Medical Officer, leading clinical initiatives, and operations for two of its high-acuity hospitals. He has been instrumental in facilitating digital transformation, growing specialty service lines, improving quality outcomes, and designing innovative value-based care strategies.
About Ed Marx
Ed Marx is an influential, veteran IT leader with deep experience in healthcare. His roles include being the CEO of Divurgent, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) for Tech Mahindra Health & Life Sciences and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Cleveland Clinic. He was also the governor-appointed chairman of the Texas Health Services Authority for eight years and a U.S. Army combat medic and combat engineer officer. He is currently CEO of Marx Advisory, a company that helps healthcare executives and organizations achieve objectives and key results.
About Joaquim Neto
Joaquim Neto is Chief Strategy Officer at Verato. He has decades of experience in information management and master data management technologies across industries, with a particular expertise in healthcare and in master patient index (MPI) and health information exchange (HIE) solutions. He has consulted and delivered solutions for healthcare providers and payers of all types—from Fortune 500 health systems to community hospitals. Prior to Verato, Joaquim worked at Initiate Systems and IBM. Joaquim is a fan of the outdoors and is an avid runner, biker, and fisherman.
