As outlined in the full report, healthcare institutions need to consider three major principles in the application of Intelligent Efficiency: integration of tech, data, and operations; a simultaneous focus on both consumers and providers; and a holistic approach to the adoption of new techniques or technologies.

The first principle: Integrate technology, data, and the human

To truly succeed in a state of systemic-level pressures, healthcare entities will need to adopt an organization-wide ethos that, above all, prizes the smart integration of technology, data, and operations. That means rolling out technologies that are part of an efficiency mosaic with effects throughout the hospital or clinic.

Examples of a successful efficiency mosaic can be found at Germany’s Nuremberg hospital, an institution with 2,730 beds and 6,000 staff. Feeling pressure from payors to speed up its report times for cardiology diagnostic procedures, they instituted a solution that went well beyond the cardiology department. Rather than simply conducting a training for cardiologists or adopting a one-off piece of technology that would foster faster reporting, the hospital conducted a full workflow analysis and connected all diagnostic modalities to a single cardiology information system that could generate a report available to all relevant care providers.

The effort involved adopting the Centricity™ Cardio Workflow system, but it also involved extensive training and education for a wide variety of hospital employees, advanced project management, and the creation of a new type of administrative report. The results reveal the benefits of this type of approach: the team decreased the time spent by cardiologists to complete cath lab reports by 60%* and increased quality control compliance to 100 percent.ⁱ

The improved structures built on these types of comprehensive efforts will play a key role in promoting a type of efficiency that speaks to every element of a healthcare organization. In turn, the resulting benefits like time savings promote greater profitability.

The second principle: Be consumer-centric and provider-centric

But thriving in the new normal also means embracing the types of internal changes that will address the pressures of consumerization and create a seamless patient experience. Healthcare entities ranging from national systems to individual physicians must create systems that satisfy greater patient interest in the clinical decisions that affect both their physical and financial well-being.

Front-line medical providers must be able to effectively meet consumer demands and provide timely, understandable, and actionable information to patients about clinical processes, the safety of their care plan, and guarantees regarding outcomes. The most crucial new technology will find a way to make this type of contact a seamless part of care that does not take excess time or make care delivery less efficient.

Setting up systems and adopting technologies that help patients better understand their care and consistently communicate its benefits and risks, as well as reduce waiting times for tests and procedures will be essential to meeting the challenges of consumerization. Of note, it will boost patient satisfaction and improve patient loyalty to a hospital system.

That is why Intelligently Efficient platforms like Centricity™ Cardio Workflow also include significant advantages that help healthcare professional provide better care for patients. At the nearly century-old American Hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, the cardiology department incorporated the system to automate their cath lab and echo workflow, bringing in the hospital’s IT department to assist with the adoption. The system eliminated the need for manual entry of some patient information, paper-based worksheets, and transcription, which allowed the hospital to reduce turnaround times for anxious patients. But even more importantly, the cardiology department was able to virtually eliminate error-prone manual processes.

At the same time, it is also important to remember that the application of any truly efficient innovation also takes into account the needs of physicians, nurses, technologists, and other providers. Given providers’ strong desire to give the best care for their patients, improving patient satisfaction will likely improve provider satisfaction. However, providers also need to be treated as important stakeholders in their own right. True Intelligent Efficiency is inclusive of all elements of the system, including those at its heart.

The third principle: Take a holistic approach

Most new developments in healthcare practice are designed to increase productivity, foster better communication, and help organize the explosion of actionable data. These are all laudable goals, but if they are not applied holistically, they run the risk of failure.

An example of a true holistic approach is Oregon Health and Science University’s (OHSU) adoption of the Mural™ Virtual Care Solution (Mural), a platform that integrates real time data from multiple systems and devices to paint a comprehensive picture of patient status and prioritize clinicians’ attention to the most critical patients across multiple facilities, based on hospital defined protocols. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the timely adoption of Mural™ allowed the teaching hospital to operate more efficiently by enabling specialists in a central location to provide clinical support to bedside teams caring for patients in multiple ICUs.

OHSU took a system-wide approach to the adoption of Mural™, working with front line providers to ensure the solution would support their current workflows by digitizing their defined protocols and best practice standards. The result was a system that improved efficiencies in care delivery by allowing critical care experts to remotely oversee data such as patients’ vitals and best practice standards in near real time. Just as importantly, it also allowed for better visibility into ICU bed access for those in need of intensive care, better data collection and monitoring for individual patients, greater satisfaction among providers who found it easier to fulfill their mission of delivering high-quality patient care, and a more efficient distribution of hospital beds across the system.

The OHSU experience shows that, in contrast to haphazard or ad hoc adoption of new technologies, Intelligent Efficiency’s comprehensive approach addresses the major issues confronting contemporary healthcare and the desires of multiple stakeholders. Adopting new innovations in an attempt to increase some sort of hazy notion of “efficiency” is the shortsighted approach of stragglers. Leaders look at innovation with a more complete view.