05 Apr
How can Modern Healthcare Intranets Help Improve Patient Care
Besides putting a significant burden on the healthcare sector, the COVID-19 pandemic has also brought to the forefront a simple fact, “No industry is more closely aligned with its customers than healthcare.” When healthcare workers face unprecedented challenges, modern healthcare is not only about modern medicine.
Be it a nurse or a doctor; every healthcare worker is struggling to enhance the quality of life for the patients they treat. Moreover, with healthcare data growing at a compound annual growth rate of 36%, healthcare companies must reap this data’s full potential to improve health outcomes. In an industry where a single mistake can have dire consequences, healthcare organizations must also equip their staff with the tools and knowledge to provide exceptional treatment.
Research by PwC states, “ The experience features that American health consumers value most fall into 5 categories – convenience, quality, support, personalization, and communication.” Consequently, modern healthcare must evolve to ensure patient care is accessible, convenient, personalized, and user-friendly.
Modern intranets help improve patient care by facilitating smooth internal communication and collaboration, productivity, training staff, and empowering your employees to put their best foot forward.
So, let’s discuss this further to get a better insight.
How modern intranets help improve patient care
1. Minimize errors with better access to information
Healthcare is the last industry where employees can afford to commit a mistake. To reduce the possibility of accidental harm to the patient’s well-being, healthcare staff must, at all times, have access to the right tools, information, and people.
A modern intranet acts as a comprehensive knowledge repository with patient records, medical papers, and other resources accessible on a unified interface. Combine it with a smart search engine that provides more contextual and personalized search results and a mobile-friendly interface, and the most up-to-date resources are always available at the fingertips.
2. Enable cross-functional collaboration
As the practice of medicine becomes exceptionally modern and specialized, medical professionals must move from operating in silos to effectively collaborating with other employees who may be experts in their field.
Modern intranets comprise a robust employee directory that assists the staff in locating people with specific specialities. People are tagged by role, location, and department, so employees can easily search and contact them directly on the intranet, even in case of an emergency.
3. Store confidential patient data in a secure manner
Cyberattacks in the healthcare industry can have disastrous ramifications, including reputational damage and penalties under various health laws pertaining to patient privacy and security.
Modern intranets have customizable user permissions and multi-factor authentication systems that restrict document access, so only the staff that has the required permission can view certain files, while other documents remain confidential.
4. Engage staff with compelling content and instant notifications
Any typical healthcare organization has a lot of information to keep pace with, including new treatments and procedures and results of medical research.
With various social capabilities, like blogs, articles, video and audio chat, and discussion forums, the staff can instantly publish updated procedures, send personalized staff alerts and clinic notifications, and share images and videos of events and medical conferences. Targeted communication ensures relevant content reaches the right people, wherever they are.
5. Ensure employee well-being
Amidst the global pandemic, a majority of healthcare workers faced overwhelming amounts of workload and a sense of burnout. Given workplace stress can reduce efficiency and have a major impact on patient experience, it is essential for healthcare organizations to cultivate a sense of well-being and boost morale.
That’s where modern intranets come into the picture. A dedicated well-being portal right on the homepage can inform employees about outlets for additional support. Moreover, articles, video content, and blogs can make the staff aware about other wellness initiatives for internal guidance.
Stay connected on the go with a mobile app
Healthcare staff, especially frontline workers need information on the go and need to always stay connected with their peers. With an intranet mobile app, employees can access critical resources like patient records, insurance claims, medical resources, policies, regulations wherever they are. A mobile app also allows users to search for and connect with the right people within the organization during time sensitive situations. Moreover workers can receive personalized notifications about the latest healthcare news and organizational updates.
Delivering healthcare information through patient portals
Patient portals are extranets that improve the patient-healthcare provider relationship and give patients more control over their treatment.
Patients can play a more active role in their treatment and recovery through self-service portals, such as checking lab results, updating insurance information, booking appointments, paying off unpaid bills, and requesting prescription refills.
Benefits of a patient portal
- Increases efficiency – By making communication seamless between healthcare organizations and their patients, patient portals increase efficiency of the office staff. Moreover, such portals save time, allowing patients to fill necessary details themselves, and reducing errors and inconsistencies in the patient information.
- Streamlines workflows and enhances productivity – Since patient portals host a dedicated section for FAQs, receptionists and nurses no longer have to answer simple, non-urgent queries and can focus on more urgent healthcare needs.
- Reduces patient inflow – Patient portals promote a culture of telemedicine. For example, a patient wants to schedule an appointment for a change in medication. Instead of booking a physical consultation, the patient can very well do it through the portal’s messaging system, leaving room for patients who need a diagnosis or in-person medical care.
- Ensures fewer medical errors – When taking patient phone calls, receptionists and other medical staff may relay the wrong information to the nurses and doctors. However, the possibility of misunderstanding patient needs gets significantly reduced when doctors receive written messages from patients through the patient portal. Moreover, telemedication can automatically check for any drug-to-drug reactions and allergies before a patient’s prescription is filled up.
- Automates day-to-day tasks – Patient portals can help the office staff automate tasks like sending appointment and payment reminders, scheduling yearly checkups, and providing patients with billing information, test results, and consent forms.
Getting Started
Modern intranets build a more efficient and effective healthcare team and equip your staff with the resources to provide an unparalleled standard of care. Moreover, external patient portals provide a host of benefits that streamline workflows, increase patient engagement and loyalty, and manage costs.
At Acuvate, we help healthcare organizations build modern healthcare intranets to improve patient care with Mesh 3.0, our Employee Experience Platform. Moreover, we build and deploy patient portals on SharePoint, assisting clients in building a more fruitful relationship with their patients. Some popular capabilities of Mesh include:
- Content Personalizer
- Insights based Recommendations
- Self Service Tools
- Knowledge Management with applied AI
- Cognitive Enterprise Search
- Flexible Integrations for all Enterprise Applications
- Easy and Efficient Content Management system
- Usage Analytics to enhance Adoption
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our digital workplace consultants for a personalized consultation.
Poonam Chug is AVP - SaaS Strategy & Business. She has worked in various areas, right from designing and executing sales & account management strategies to reengineering digital workplace solutions. With her determined focus on our mission and progressive approach, she has achieved customer delight in the space of AI, Knowledge Mining, Content & Collaboration, Virtual Assistants, RPA and more. Backed with a deep understanding of customer needs and technology, she leads the SaaS business unit with an upshot of maximizing revenue while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Poonam Chug