4 Big Moves to Drive Digital Transformation at Your Health System

Spurred by COVID-19, we are witnessing the unprecedented digital transformation of health care, and hospitals and health systems that don’t rapidly innovate to meet this “new normal” risk being left behind. Health care organizations must tailor their strategies to win consumer loyalty while delivering differentiated value.

Digital makes these shifts possible, and hospitals and health systems must move from “doing digital” to “being digital” to compete in a rapidly evolving market. AVIA, a leading digital transformation partner for health systems, designed the “4 big moves” to provide a road map for hospitals and health systems looking to embrace digital and emerge as leaders in health care.

Big Move #1: Own the On-ramp

AVIA’s first big move, “own the on-ramp,” encourages health care organizations to create a flexible supply and demand model. In this model, consumer demand is the driving force. To create a digital-focused on-ramp, consider:

• Building out the digital front door. Create an integrated digital access point, with capabilities to digitally search for and schedule an appointment, virtually triage symptoms, navigate to the right site of care and access on-demand virtual visits. These capabilities can be provided through chat, text, voice or a hospital’s website or app.
• Envision the digital front door as a marketplace.This approach might include dynamic pricing for expiring inventory, merchandising to third-party sites, transparency of services and pricing, and convenient payments.

Owning the on-ramp allows hospitals and health systems to improve convenience and optionality for patients and families across their care journey.

Big Move #2: Hyper-personal Care Orchestration

Hyper-personal care orchestration begins with establishing a strong data foundation to develop a personalized “n-of-1 view” of the patient. With this move, hospitals can:

• Stitch together data about a single individual across clinical settings, transactions, behaviors and health information to deeply know the patient.
• Personalize digital interactions (text, chat, voice) at their digital front door, actively learning from previous patient interactions.
• Orchestrate a broader, more comprehensive care plan, creating individualized, proactive care interventions that anticipate the needs of the patient.

Move #2 will allow hospitals to deliver a consistent, continuous patient experience that allows them to win on loyalty.

Big Move #3: Specialty Care Double Down

“Specialty care double down” means investing in a digitally enabled, frictionless, concierge-level specialty care experience. To execute on this move, hospitals must:

• Leverage data to orchestrate expedited workflow and care paths in less acute care settings, even the home.
• Develop transparent communication and information sharing with the referring provider.
• Buy, build and partner to create digital solutions for surgical care orchestration to guide patients through their care journey from pre- to post-op.

Hospitals and health systems that execute move #3 will improve access, optimize their assets and footprint, and ultimately build the “service line of the future” that coordinates care across multiple specialties and sites of care.

Big Move #4: New Work

Big move #4 brings the concept of “new work” into reality, converting core operating processes to automated platforms that optimize cost structures and deliver value. To successfully deliver on new work, hospitals must:

• Build an effective enterprise-level automation strategy, which provides an assessment of current back-office functions, benchmarked compared to other digital-first industries, like finance or retail.
• Complement human abilities with automation to exponentially shift costs out of the system.
• “Get phygital” by integrating digital and physical operations to enable expansion in network coverage, improvement in patient acquisition and retention, and greater capital flexibility.

Executing on “new work” will yield sustainable competitive advantages, allowing health care organizations to reengineer their operating chassis and associated cost structure.

Digital in Action

Hospitals and health systems must act now on these “big moves.” Each of the plays in these moves can be architected into a road map that makes sense for the specific needs of an organization, with foundational items and quick wins that increase patient loyalty and improve the patient and provider experience.

For more details on the big moves, download the full white paper from AVIA. For further information, visit aviahealth.com.

Cynthia Perazzo is executive vice president, insights and advisory, at AVIA.

Please note that the views of the author do not always reflect the views of the AHA.