The digitization of health care has been an inevitable advancement in providing superior care services, accessibility, and convenience for those seeking medical assistance. There are almost no instances of patients waiting for a phone call from their physicians to hear about their test results anymore. The most common of all developments in healthcare information technology is the maintenance of electronic health records (EHR), one of the many types of software used by healthcare professionals today. With EHR software, patients can view test results, bills, and check their medical history with the help of a patient portal on a desktop or mobile device. The digital experience helps to foster a positive doctor-patient relationship experience thanks to the degree of transparency in the technology used.

Also Read: How to improve Inpatient experience with Salesforce?

What is an EHR?

Electronic health records (EHRs) are detailed accounts of updated data such as the patient’s contact information, next of kin, vital signs, allergies, medical history, current and past medications, immunizations, radiology reports, and laboratory data. These records, maintained by the health care provider, can be shared across the spectrum of a patient’s providers to help deliver a more comprehensive health care experience with the most accurate information available. Maintenance of EHR inpatient care eliminates the following.

• No logistical issues of paper records as clinical data is readily available to authorized users.
• Clinical bookkeeping is smooth and there are no missed diagnoses or laboratory evidence.
• Patient records can always be mined for advanced research in allied medical fields.

Today, many health care providers have made the switch to cloud-based EHRs which are more cost-effective to implement since they don’t require constant investments in new hardware. Evolved patient portals allow patients to follow up with their provider, pay medical dues, and get notified of relevant critical information.

EHRs Rise to Perform a More Critical Role in the Healthcare Industry

Most healthcare providers have moved past the implementation phase of EHRs and are now exploring the optimization of EHRs. The records go beyond being mere repositories of patient information and extend to handling external documents, messages, and general communication with patients. The focus of an EHR application is slowly shifting towards maximizing the value of existing patients. It is now about expanding the interconnection between patients and their healthcare providers and extending it to an environment in which such data can apply to a larger purpose.

Consider the following:

Deloitte declares that “With global health care spending expected to rise at a CAGR of 5 percent in 2019-23, it is likely to present many opportunities for the sector…Health care systems need to work toward a future in which the collective focus shifts away from treatment to prevention and early intervention. But, are stakeholders ready to respond to these trends and brace the smart health care delivery of the future?”

How do health care providers leverage the full potential of the EHR system to progress towards smart patient care delivery, as stated above? 

EHR software draws similarities to that of any popular ERP system. With limited scope to customize EHR applications, which are primarily tuned to serve a particular purpose or embrace functionalities of third party applications, what helps extensibility is health care CRM integration.

What is Salesforce Health Cloud, and why is Salesforce Health Cloud EHR Integration Needed?

Salesforce Health Cloud is a layer of additional pre-developed functionality for healthcare organizations built on top of the hugely popular Salesforce CRM platform. Salesforce applications are versatile in terms of functioning as a database as well as a user interface. Developers within Salesforce, as well as third-party developers, can work to extend Salesforce to cater to unique health care requirements. Salesforce’s Lightning Experience interface helps smooth interaction by developers and administrators with health care audiences, in this context users and patients. It allows for presenting the right set of screens for each user type at each organization.

The core functions of CRM inherently translate into several areas in healthcare that need attention. Let us look at how the core features of Salesforce CRM have been extended to cater to health care

• New patient acquisition (customer relationship and data)
• Physician recruitment and outreach (vendor management)
• Patient marketing campaigns (customer/prospect marketing campaigns)
• Patient complaints (customer support)
• One-on-one patient-physician communication (one-click logging of customer emails)

Additionally, the current version includes-

• Tracking and management of health care plan chosen
• Patient risk classification
• Patient communities for reference
• Patient assessments
• Patient surveys

The Salesforce partner ecosystem is made up of dozens of third-party software developers and service organizations to accommodate health care demands. While many health care organizations start with an EHR system, Salesforce Health Cloud complements EHR and subsequently paves the way for Sales cloud EHR integration.

Benefits of Salesforce Health Cloud EHR Integration

• With Health Cloud CRM integration, health care professionals have a 360-degree view of patients, and this helps collaborative treatment if necessary.
• With the flow of data and access to it, providers can intervene effectively and timely patient relationship management results in better care and clinical outcomes.
• Integration effectively brings about collaboration and communication experience within the service team network. One can assign tasks, collaborate, and send secure messages on any device. This leads to increased productivity, which gives them more time to focus on providing quality care.
• Management can increase referral networks, and patient volume can climb through active engagement.
• With Salesforce Health Cloud EHR integration, the patient can be an active partner in their care. Thus patient interactions can be unified with the sharing of educational content, appointment reminders, resources such as support groups, and convenient mobile messaging.

The Future 

With advancements in areas such as Telemedicine, slated to be worth more than $66 billion by the year 2021 (Mordor Intelligence), a unified system of health care that functions in an integrated environment is inevitable. Integrated health care systems are empowered to deal with patient care across all interface points. Call center agents can quickly get a grasp on the situation and trace the entire history to obtain a 360-degree view of the patient, which includes a combination of marketing activities, EHR updates, and retail activities. Choosing Salesforce Health Cloud EHR integration enhances CRM capabilities and enables future state capabilities such as community portals for collaboration and retail to upsell opportunities for patient experience drivers.

The bottom line is that improved patient engagement in the ever-evolving world of care makes the organization or the care provider ready for advancements in health care.