It’s a question most healthcare providers have avoided since calls for a digital revolution first began. Now it’s the question plaguing the industry in the wake of the coronavirus.But with so many providers scrambling to increase beds, supplies, and qualified workers, delaying digital transformation in favor of immediate needs isn’t a bad response. It’s just not a sustainable one.If we’ve learned anything from COVID-19, our healthcare systems need a digital intervention.The most forward-thinking organizations are already streamlining their activities while improving patient care—and they’re using technology to help them do it.Here’s what’s likely to stick:
Workflows will become more efficient
Bureaucracy is expensive. According to one recently published study, the United States spent more than a third of its annual hospital dollars on administration costs in 2017. Paper-based, manual processes are one of the biggest factors contributing to the bloat. From routine tasks like appointment-setting and rescheduling to complex processes like pharmacy drug tracing, medical chart requests, and post-care assessments, getting consensus from multiple healthcare professionals is often an inefficient and costly exercise.Now that healthcare practitioners have a better appreciation for convenient, real-time access to critical information, we’re likely to see more organizations adopt workflow automation and business process management (BPM) software that saves time—and billions of tax dollars—by integrating and automating their operations.
