Kristen and her husband Jack live their lives online. Like other millennials, they’ve welcomed technology into their lives since they were young. Now in their early 30s, they rely on smart technologies to enhance their lives; for example, online retailers know their style and their home heating system adjusts itself to their schedules. It’s all seamless, intuitive and highly personalized.
Kristen and Jack are now starting a family, and they expect their healthcare experience to be just as flawless. Unfortunately, at many facilities they might as well be having a baby in 1998, rather than 2018.
The problem is that most healthcare systems are far behind the curve when it comes to using technology to deliver highly personalized experiences to patients.
“Technology itself is not the barrier,” explains Mustafa H. Kabeer, M.D., a surgeon at CHOC Children’s Hospital in California. “The question is, how do we use technology to build human connections, to build trust with our patients and let them know we care deeply about them? How do we use technology to also foster a better, more efficient experience for the healthcare system?”
“We need to transform the patient experience,” says Susan Collins, GM, Healthcare and Life Sciences at Salesforce. “With the intelligent customer relationship management features of Salesforce’s Health Cloud platform, we can add a layer of engagement to create connected, collaborative and personalized care.” The platform facilitates seamless behind-the-scenes healthcare workflows, explains Collins, so the numerous hospital systems a patient interacts with work at high efficiency, and every patient has a five-star experience.
Here’s how that might look in the very near future at Chester Healthcare, a hypothetical midwestern healthcare system that uses Health Cloud.
Pregnancy Care - Personalized
Once Kristen’s longtime GP at Chester Healthcare confirms her pregnancy, her care is coordinated through Chester Health Cloud, which is based on the Salesforce Health Cloud platform.
On a centralized page dedicated to Kristen’s “care journey,” Chester Health Cloud displays clinical data such as her due date and recent test results. It also displays and connects all of the care providers who will be involved in her care, including her doctors, a nurse educator, nutritionist, and the labor and delivery nurses at the hospital. All of her providers can pull up Kristen’s page, where they can see what care has been completed, view and schedule needed tasks and tests, add notes, and also directly communicate with each other. Indeed, Kristen’s care journey page gives all of her providers a complete, 360-degree view of her healthcare experience. The system also collects and analyzes system-wide data on all of Chester Healthcare’s current maternity patients, allowing hospital administrators to see how resources are being used, identify trends and make changes in real time.
Most importantly, Kristen’s care providers can easily use the system to help her: They can use their mobile devices to very quickly get information about her health, communicate with her and deliver the very personalized care she has come to expect.
Soon after seeing her GP, Kristen logs into her account on My Health, the patient access portal to Chester Health Cloud. Triggered by her pregnancy confirmation, her private homepage now features video profiles of several OB-GYNs. She selects Dr. James Rogers and makes an appointment online. Dr. Rogers and his head nurse, Jennifer, are immediately added to her online care team. A few minutes later Kristen gets a text from Dr. Rogers via Health Cloud, welcoming her to the practice and asking if she has any urgent questions he can answer before her appointment. Jennifer texts the next day to introduce herself, and suggests Kristen visit a nearby lab for blood work before her appointment.
Kristen gets an automated text alert once her lab results are available in My Health. She views the results, sees that her hemoglobin level is noted as “low,” and sends a note to Dr. Rogers asking what that means and what she can do about it. Later that day, she sets out to meet with Dr. Rogers. As she nears the building, she gets another automated text showing her how to get to his office. Jennifer, Dr. Rogers’ nurse, had also received a text alert when Kristen was nearby, along with a photo, so she welcomed Kristen by name when she entered the office. When Kristen meets with the doctor, he has already reviewed her questions and they talk about her test results. He advises her to add an iron supplement to boost her hemoglobin level. After the visit, he adds videos on pregnancy health to her My Health page, focused on specific questions that Kristen raised.
Concerned about her history of high blood pressure, Dr. Rogers asks Kristen to take her blood pressure daily using an at-home device that is connected to Chester Health Cloud and automatically uploads the readings to her care journey page. All of her providers are notified that her blood pressure is an ongoing concern that needs to be monitored in all settings; they can all easily see her recent readings on her page.
Specialty Care – Personalized
In her 7th month, Kristen tells Dr. Rogers she is not sleeping well because she is worried about taking maternity leave. Using Chester Health Cloud, Dr. Rogers immediately contacts an in-network social worker, who talks with them by video about Kristen’s legal rights and adds some relevant articles to her My Health account. Dr. Rogers also lines up an appointment with a sleep specialist. Both specialists are immediately added to her care team, and can monitor her ongoing care through Chester Health Cloud. During her last month of pregnancy, Dr. Rogers sends her video profiles of several Chester Healthcare pediatricians, along with his personal recommendations.
After each interaction with Chester Healthcare staff, Kristen is asked to anonymously review the event. Any concerns she has are addressed immediately, and aggregated review data is studied to see where patient care systems can be improved.
Delivery - Personalized
When Kristen starts having contractions, Dr. Rogers checks in with her by video and advises her to go to the hospital. He alerts her care team and the hospital staff via Chester Health Cloud, and when Kristen and Jack pull into the parking lot, they are greeted by name by an orderly with a wheelchair. He escorts them directly to their assigned room and several floor nurses arrive minutes later, also greeting Kristen and Jack by name and explaining their roles.
A digital screen in the room gives Kristen easy access to her My Health account. Her primary nurse, Allison, shows her the list of all scheduled staff visits, meals and other events, so Kristen knows what to expect. Allison explains that the system is now continually tracking her labor progress, as well as her blood pressure, and that Dr. Rogers and staff will be monitoring her via the two-way video on her monitor. She assures Kristen that if she needs anything, all she needs to do is ask; the staff will hear her request via the monitor.
Kristen can also log into the system with her own phone, making it easy to chat with family. She can also use her My Health account to change the room temperature, lower the lights, order food and watch some breathing videos that she had selected a few weeks earlier.
Delivery – Overflow Crisis Averted
Data on the labor progress of all women on the floor is aggregated and analyzed to schedule delivery rooms. That evening, however, several women arrive for unexpectedly early deliveries. Chester Health Cloud immediately detects the excess and hospital administrators use the real-time data on their own dashboards to quickly re-assign rooms and staff to maternity. No patient is left waiting for a room or medical attention; each arriving woman is greeted by name by an orderly and immediately taken to a fully equipped and staffed room.
Patient Experience - Personalized
Chatting with friends a few weeks later, Kristen raves about her Chester Healthcare experience. “Everyone there knew my name. They anticipated my every need, my every question and were so friendly. And when we were ready to go home, they had everything all ready for us: the doctor’s discharge notes, the baby’s medications, the wheelchair escort to our car. They even texted my mom when we were leaving, so she could meet us at home.”
“Even now, whenever I have questions about caring for the baby, I can just log into my Chester Health page and ask a nurse for help,” she adds. “Having a baby can be overwhelming, but I trusted that everyone there knew what I needed. They have been there for me every step of the way.”
“It’s all about communication and building trust,” agrees Dr. Kabeer. “Once you build that trust, when patients know that you care, you get better outcomes and you build loyalty in your patients. They are going to come back to your facility.”
Learn how your healthcare facility can provide highly personalized, five-star patient experiences with the Salesforce Health Cloud platform.