Coordinating care for high-risk patients can be challenging. An individual patient’s health outcome involves many clinicians, which means data crosses between multiple sources and can span multiple systems. With so many moving parts, clear communication between care teams can be extremely difficult.

The Disconnect

In many health systems, technology solutions aren’t rolled out to the entire care team and aren’t enabled for mobile. While electronic health records (EHRs) assist coordination within a single health system, they’re ineffective connecting clinicians who work for different providers and insurance companies, i.e. payers. This can cause breakdowns in communication and collaboration on the wellness of a patient. If the entire care team isn’t engaged and informed throughout the full process, patients can’t achieve optimal health outcomes.

Healthcare organizations and their IT should have the same goal: To create an interactive community that drives rapid adoption by all of the clinicians and business teams

Successful population health can only be measured with intelligent, real-time analytics that digitally track the patient experience

Crossing Silos

A robust collaboration platform—one with sites dedicated to the care of each high-risk patient—can help fill in the gaps of the care coordination genome. Providers and payers can use such a platform to communicate amongst each other, no matter their position within the health system or where they’re located. Rather than having small pockets of teams working within technology silos, a collaboration platform that integrates directly with a secure instant messaging platform allows the entire expanded healthcare team to be reachable, to share information and to store documentation in a single place.

With healthcare collaboration solutions, clinicians working for specific health systems can also participate in the communication and messaging around a patient’s care, even if they’re not employed by the organization where they’re giving care. Many times, clinicians who work for another health system are assisting with outpatient care at another organization and don’t have similar access to critical patient information. Giving clinicians an integrated platform that is mobile-friendly to do their work allows secure collaboration across health systems, ultimately benefiting patients’ health and safety. The results: the entire care team is connected through one central hub—a hub that meets all the needs of busy clinicians, from the bedside back to the hospital.

Key Benefits

Creating a single entity for care coordination has many advantages, including:

View trackable metrics and analytics to see how care teams can work better together
Set timely appointments for patients without delay by having a more robust communications tool
Securely transfer and share clinical information or patient data, all in one place
Track key indicators and events during consultation and referrals
Identify and attempt to solve logistical and financial barriers to completing a referral

Regardless of which organization’s EHR is used, robust healthcare collaboration solutions can serve as common ground to support the patient experience throughout treatment.