Healthcare organizations face a multitude of external and internal challenges today. They are doing their best to dodge cyberattacks, reduce turnover by improving work-life balance, and manage escalating costs. This is all while ensuring patients receive quality care experiences.
And the cost of facing these challenges adds up. For example, hospitals reported a registered nurse turnover rate of 18.4% last year, and the financial losses ranged from $3.9 million to $5.8 million per hospital.
As a result, many hospitals rely on hundreds of software solutions to solve these issues and handle everything from workforce scheduling to provider data management. However, this often only exacerbates the problem and does not address the underlying issues. We can’t continue to expect clinicians to deliver high-quality care when they have a patchwork of siloed technology solutions that take up valuable time in their workday to navigate and utilize, thereby hindering their ability to provide compassionate care and treatment for all patients.
Healthcare organizations that were once slow to adopt technology have accelerated their spending in recent years to solve some of these administrative challenges. McKinsey & Company reports that almost all health system executives identify digital transformation as a high or top priority. However, many of these same executives have yet to deliver on the promise of digital transformation because of insufficient planning and resource allocation.
To avoid adding to the patchwork of disparate systems, healthcare leaders must balance their workforce’s eagerness to adopt new technologies with a focus on the consolidation of the right solutions. Here’s where to begin.
The hidden costs of siloed tech
Hospitals and health system workers spend a large portion of their days on administrative tasks, including documentation, personnel data management, scheduling, payroll, and supply chain management. While these tasks are important to keep the organization running, they contribute to an overwhelming workload for staff and take up time that could be better spent on patient care.
In the last decade, the industry has been working to embrace technology solutions. According to research from Bain, 80% of healthcare executives increased IT spending over the past year. But with so many solutions on the market promising to ease industry challenges, many health systems have gone overboard with technology, further confusing their workforce, interrupting internal communication, and taking further time from patients. They have too many individual solutions trying to solve individual problems.
We already know that the use of siloed technology is posing a problem: working with many different technologies complicates the job when these solutions are supposed to make it easier. The real solution lies in tailoring the technology stack to be more streamlined for the workforce.
The power of consolidation
The answer isn’t always through expansion or chasing after the shiny object. The real game-changer often lies in consolidation and getting smarter about your technology stack. When was the last time you audited your technology solutions? Do you have multiple solutions serving a similar purpose? Have you talked with your clinicians recently about whether this technology supports their workflow?
By asking these questions, healthcare organizations and their leaders can begin to address multiple operational needs and create a more cohesive and integrated operating environment. As we have witnessed over the last few years, healthcare can be chaotic, but system consolidation helps eliminate unnecessary chaos and better manage systems and the workforce with a unified, streamlined approach.
Here are a few benefits that you can unlock through consolidation:
- Unification – Providing a single source of truth for everyone to work on the same page and achieve greater levels of consistency.
- Efficiency – Less distractions. Fewer systems mean staff have fewer systems to juggle and more time to focus on getting their job done — making sure patients have excellent care.
- Streamline Communication – When systems speak the same language, healthcare teams can seamlessly share data and communicate to improve patient outcomes when seconds or minutes matter.
A roadmap for unified solutions
To achieve a successful unified solution, healthcare organizations must shift focus towards a collaborative approach — in short, shared governance. The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) endorses this model and is a crucial component for organizations striving for Magnet Recognition, where nursing leaders are recognized for aligning their strategic goals to improve their organization’s patient outcomes.
Shared governance embodies a framework emphasizing teamwork and incorporating clinical staff into decision-making to influence outcomes and improve patient care. Here’s how to get started:
- Involve diverse stakeholders. Healthcare is a team sport. Physicians and IT staff play just as important of a role as administrators and nurses, and the list goes on forever. Shared governance is crucial for bringing these diverse voices together and ensures everyone has a seat at the table when it comes to technology integration.
- Prioritize integration. The goal should never be to add more technology for the sake of it. The goal should be to look for integrated and existing solutions that allow you to address the problem effectively. This may mean selecting new technology as long as it solves several challenges and replaces multiple solutions. A certain emphasis will be on choosing systems that share data seamlessly together.
- Focus on user experience. When frontline workers are involved in decision-making, system utilization significantly improves because, after all, their insights are invaluable. They are the primary users!
- Continuous feedback loop. Create an environment where feedback is encouraged and acted upon to identify problem areas and opportunities for improvement, as well as what’s working to include in your next pilot or implementation.
- Empower clinical staff. Leverage clinicians’ firsthand experiences and encourage them to participate in software purchasing decisions. Incorporating clinician feedback and perspectives helps confirm implementations successfully and integrate directly into the clinical workflow.
Unite for a more efficient healthcare future
Optimizing healthcare operations and technology isn’t a solo endeavor. It requires a collective effort where clinicians, administrators, and IT professionals, who may all have competing priorities, understand each other’s perspectives and work hand in hand. Finding the right balance of agility and alignment through shared governance is one of the most effective ways to accelerate consolidation and allow healthcare leaders the platform to pave the way for a more efficient, patient-centered approach.
In healthcare, less is sometimes more — especially when it comes to technology — to ensure organizations aren’t just surviving these challenges but overcoming them and thriving.
Photo: eichinger julien, Getty Images
Brian Fugere is the former Chief Product Officer at symplr, where he led product management, strategy, and user experience design efforts. During his tenure, he also served as Chief Marketing Officer and led the engineering organization. Fugere has deep experience in executive leadership, marketing, product, sales, and operations across public, private equity, and venture-backed companies. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, an MBA from George Mason University, and has completed a leadership and business program at Harvard Business School.
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