Aligning Healthcare Strategic Priorities with Cost-Saving Considerations

By Shana Tachikawa

Recent years have seen an explosion of digital health fruition to accommodate remote and adaptive patient care needs. Now in 2024 though, healthcare organizations need to push digital health innovation beyond initial operational survival tactics to more digitally frictionless patient-clinician exchange experiences. Doing so better aligns footing in the return to value-based care initiatives while expanding patient care reach and competitive health system growth. To realistically attain this strategic vision, see three healthcare leadership considerations for next-level digital health advancement while driving IT support savings, starting with team flexibility and coordination.

1. Multi-functional team flexibility
   Many health systems are navigating staffing and financial strain on top of significant operational changes, like new facility acquisitions, EHR new version upgrades or entire EHR new system transitions. Having an IT support team who can easily flex in and out of project area needs is pivotal for nimble response without draining resource costs or adding on ramp up and training time. Healthcare leadership should ensure IT support teams not only understand the EHR system but also cross-organizational workflow and communication to be able to actively adjust processes when needed.
   
   As short-term targets change, leadership must effectively communicate prioritization, responsibility and support gaps, utilizing team skill matrixes to allocate resources. They should maintain strong lines of communication bi-directionally to align quick-moving changes and be transparent about concerns or trouble spots. Just because things are fast-paced doesn't mean staff can cut steps. Ensure analysts are still properly documenting changes, testing, and follow-up monitoring, as well as following data governance guidelines, and maintaining a cybersecurity lens. What seems like an obvious quick decommissioning target or small workflow adjustment can have significant impact downstream. Having a team of multi-functional resources who can understand, follow and resolve downstream issues before they become priority-one tickets significantly curbs later resolution time, possible clinical care or business office delays, or cross-department blame games.
   
   
2. Data analytics' impact on issue mitigation and cost savings
   From a data and analytics perspective, the industry is seeing a continued focus on operational efficiency amid fluctuating patient care demand despite staffing shortages. Priority is not only on cross-organization coordination and situational awareness, but also on daily operational support and EHR efficiencies for both clinical care and cost-savings opportunities. An often overlooked area for meaningful data analytics application is the Tier 1+ IT help desk. Powered by Dimensional Insights – 8x Best in KLAS Winner for Health Data Analytics and Business Intelligence – FlexView strategically arms healthcare leaders with the IT support data insights they need to better address IT utilization across their growing health systems. Its insights deliver performance accountability to ensure hospital ROI. Hourly trends identify busy times to determine areas for additional IT staffing or training. Incident analysis depicts bigger picture departmental workflow or system education hindrances. As a clear view into organization-wide EHR use, this is especially helpful during mission critical events, like crisis management, new system go lives or EHR upgrades to detect areas of concern.
   
   Beyond the IT help desk, healthcare organizations are now more focused on leveraging predictive hospital data analytics toward consumer needs and patient engagement, since they cannot rely as much on immediate feedback of human interaction in the shift to virtual and remote care.
   
   
3. Where healthcare leaders are targeting spending
   According to a recent Gartner CIO Survey: A Healthcare Providers' Perspective,* in terms of top plans for changes in specific technology investments, business intelligence/data analytics is poised for the highest increase in investment at 66%. Notably keeping up with previous years' momentum, "47% of respondents also expect increased investment in consumer/user experience" initiatives.
   
   Whereas past years clearly pivoted healthcare organizations to crisis response, leaders must now ensure the right analytics, optimization, and patient engagement initiatives are in place to elicit the greatest value from new technology acquisitions. Healthcare leaders should evaluate and leverage vendor partnerships that best support new digital capabilities but also offer dependability and adaptability to keep up with continued health system innovation.
   
   

Closing Thoughts
The turbulence of recent years created dual complexities of burdensome healthcare provider revenue strain and bursting digital health demand. In the more permanent shift to virtual care, healthcare organizations should look to IT to effectively propel adaptive care delivery initiatives, better align health system competitive growth and unify the end-user experience while building in support flexibility.

Stay tuned for additional healthcare leadership insights.