Authored by Devon Womack, chief operating officer for The US Oncology Network, and Amyn Gillani, regional vice president of IT-Digital Innovation for McKesson and The US Oncology Network
The rapid, ongoing advancement of technology continues to dramatically impact and indeed shape all aspects of healthcare, with many exciting advancements on the horizon. Providers who embrace the power and promise of technology are delivering significant benefits to patients, while those who hesitate are missing out. For instance, some practices are still using the electronic health record (EHR) technology they employed when they first moved away from paper charts decades ago. The tremendous progress that has been made in healthcare technology is a rich opportunity to improve operations and move beyond digital intake documentation to more advanced applications.
Modernizing practice technology not only increases efficiency, but also enhances other critical areas, such as quality of care, cost savings, and the patient experience. Taking a closer look at how today’s healthcare technologies enable these improvements provides insight for practices considering their future technology strategy.
Focus on the patient
Practices that prioritize the patient experience have much to gain from modernizing their technologies. Improving the patient experience—making it the best it can be from initial contact to the conclusion of the care episode—increases access to care and the quality of care throughout the treatment journey. By focusing on patients and enhancing all their touchpoints and care experiences, practices can take the fullest advantage of all that digital technology innovation offers at each step in the end-to-end process, making it more streamlined, efficient, and patient-friendly.
For instance, technology can enhance the patient’s call-in experience through a unified communications suite, a contact center, and natural language processing. Technology can also streamline how the patient’s providers operate across different systems and locations, empowering them to deliver seamless optimal care as one unified team. Each step in the care delivery process can be improved with technology, minimizing inefficiencies and the risk of manual errors.
Practice modernization provides many benefits
Advanced technologies can deliver many advantages to practices, such as making clinical and administrative services:
- More efficient
Clinical decision support systems embedded within workflows create efficiency by providing critical clinical and financial information at the point of care, making the treatment decision process more systematic because everything providers need is conveniently in one place—right at their fingertips. A good example of this is McKesson’s Clear Value PlusSM,a regimen support tool in use across The US Oncology Network. It presents evidence-based treatment pathways with integrated financial information, real-time reporting, benchmarking, as well as the ability to interface with the EHR. Today, there are many different clinical decision support systems for various specialties that aid the diagnostic process.
Modernizing the practice’s digital front door can also increase efficiency. User-friendly patient portals make it easier for patients to fill out forms ahead of time, as well as ensure they have a mechanism to securely communicate with their care team. Patient portals provide easy access to health records, as well as tools and resources that empower patients to be more proactive with their care.
- More reliable
Reliability is essential in healthcare. When technology is down, patients may need to be rescheduled, interrupting their care and disrupting the efficiency of the care team. Advanced technologies can help IT teams monitor critical systems to spot potential performance issues and mitigate downtime.
One interesting application, a digital twin, is being considered as a potential future opportunity at Texas Oncology, a practice in The US Oncology Network, to increase reliability. A digital twin, as defined by IBM, is a virtual representation of a system that uses real-time data, simulation, machine learning, and reasoning to support decision making. A digital copy of a clinical practice can be made in the cloud incorporating the practice’s workflows from the call center to the check-out desk. Simulations can then be run to identify possible performance issues and generate improvements.This advanced technology uses predictive analytics to foresee breakdowns so they can be avoided. Digital twins have been used by the oil, gas, and airline industries—even Formula 1 car racing—so bringing this cutting-edge technology to healthcare is a very exciting development that can drive efficiency and reliability for practices.
Harnessing the power of the cloud
When developing a technology strategy, practices can gain many advantages by utilizing the cloud. Understanding the cloud can be daunting. In simple terms, cloud computing, as defined by Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud platform, is the delivery of computing services such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence over the internet, providing faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.
Cloud systems have a robust package of services that are ideal for healthcare and that can be scaled across various facilities, such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and a wide range of other tools. Leveraging cloud-based technology is hugely beneficial for practices, as they escape the limitations of onsite hardware and technologies that cannot be scaled. This is especially valuable for large organizations, such as Texas Oncology with 250 sites of care or The US Oncology Network with more than 2,300 providers across the nation.
Even small practices with just a few facilities gain benefits with the cloud, as it provides countless opportunities to enhance many aspects of clinical and administrative operations. For instance, cloud-based systems excel in providing interoperability and the appropriate data security across systems. They also offer a 99.9% service uptime guarantee, ensuring reliability. Practices acquire a tremendous amount of freedom with the cloud as far as what can be done, as well as better control of expenditures associated with hardware and maintenance costs.
Technology’s vital role in community oncology
Community-based oncology is one healthcare sector extremely reliant on advanced technologies. Modernizing the technology portfolio is crucial for community oncology to enable a broader technology strategy that is necessary to deliver optimal care. Incorporating interoperable systems is an important aspect of this strategy. Interoperability enables different systems to communicate and exchange data seamlessly. By implementing interoperable systems, oncologists can improve care coordination, reduce administrative burden, and enhance patient safety. For example, interoperable EHRs can enable community-based oncologists to share patient data with other providers, such as specialists or primary care physicians, ensuring patients receive coordinated, comprehensive care. Moreover, integrating genomic information for each patient directly into the EHR could strengthen precision medicine, ultimately enhancing the targeted care patients receive. With interoperable systems, community oncologists can easily access and share pharmacogenomic data, which is how a patient’s genetic makeup influences the response to a drug, with other providers, improving treatment outcomes and reducing the risk of adverse drug reactions.
Community-based oncologists can also leverage cloud-based systems to enhance their technology strategy, enabling remote access to patient data and collaboration with other providers. Overall, modernizing the technology portfolio to incorporate interoperable and cloud-based systems is essential for community oncology to provide high-quality, personalized care to patients.
Empower success through technology innovation
Practices that do not utilize today’s advanced technologies are missing great opportunities to thrive, grow, and optimize patient care. Digital technology innovation can enable success, providing a pathway for practices to carefully examine day-to-day operations and innovate each step along the way in a more digitalized, strategic manner. This will increase efficiencies, automate workflows, and reduce the administrative burden on practices, all while lowering costs, driving optimal outcomes, and improving the patient experience—key elements required for success in today’s value-based environment.
