How ServiceNow Can Ease the Process of Digital Transformation

Technology is moving fast, which should be a boon to healthcare—except some organizations are struggling to keep up. Although many companies might plan to begin or accelerate their digital transformations, about 70% of corporate transformations fail. Despite the huge increase in telemedicine adoption in the last two years, healthcare’s digital transformation isn’t moving as fast as the rate of technological advancement might suggest.

That’s because these digital transformations are complex. Often, they require a level of skill and expertise that isn’t available among in-house IT departments in the healthcare field. In addition, they sometimes require a level of change management that organizations’ leaders aren’t prepared to execute. Success requires digital transformation solutions that can alter the quality of digital services, lower service delivery costs, and provide quick fixes to the issues that hinder productivity.

The Challenges to Healthcare Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is affecting organizations everywhere, forcing companies to rethink how they do business with their stakeholders—be it customers, patients, employees, or clients—and do more with less. But it’s less about reducing costs and more about driving efficiencies that healthcare organizations can reinvest into areas where they can add more value.

Ultimately, the impact of technology in healthcare is felt more through efficiency than cost. When it comes to improving efficiency through digital transformation, healthcare organizations are facing the following hurdles and opportunities:

An aging population breeds new challenges.

Issues facing healthcare IT teams will only multiply as the numbers of stakeholders and geographical challenges grow. The aging population, for example, will push levers in healthcare more heavily in some regions than others. As the population ages and expands, any inefficiencies will compound because healthcare organizations will be serving more people.

In the future, that risk of compounding inefficient processes or workflows will drive decision makers to seek greater process efficiency. Patient experience design, patient management, the ways organizations use intelligent workflows and solutions such as portals, the pre-work of signing documents, and more will all be on the table.

The way healthcare looks is changing.

For so long, healthcare meant going into the hospital or physically seeing a provider. The advancement of technology has changed the landscape of healthcare, including how healthcare is provided. In-person care is still a considerable facet of the patient experience, but digital transformation means care options are proliferating—patients are at home with monitors, home health workers have updated devices to aid in providing care, and so on.

These treatment options introduce a multitude of issues, though. Challenges include tracking and managing multiple devices, understanding when a device is problematic, and addressing and assigning issues to the right support team. As digital transformation grows, devices and people to service them will proliferate, introducing new management challenges.

With the accessibility of telehealth comes the need to keep track of devices and data. The more devices an organization controls and the more telehealth patients it serves, the more IT teams have to track. Tracking these can be complex, and problems can arise quickly. That is why having an efficient, single-cloud platform is a great digital transformation solution.

The idea of stakeholders in healthcare is evolving.

The healthcare experience is changing for healthcare workers, too. Because options for care have expanded through digital transformation, healthcare workers have much more flexibility in where they choose to work. Many more employees, caregivers, providers, and clinicians are moving through the system, so organizations need more efficient methods of managing and monitoring them. This includes getting employees onboarded, offboarded, and transferred among facilities or creating schedules. Digital transformation has broadened the variety of opportunities and placements for healthcare workers, so hospital systems must be able to keep up with their employees’ constant movements.

Another consideration is the competitive nature of the healthcare industry right now, especially after the Great Resignation. Hospitals must make sure that the working experience incentivizes talent retention. Now, employees are effectively stakeholders in their organizations.

Compliance underpins all technological challenges.

The undercurrent of everything related to digital transformation in healthcare is compliance. With patients in small and rural towns receiving remote care, how can healthcare organizations secure the data related to those patients? How do providers ensure the care is compliant? Those key concerns will increasingly affect the industry as healthcare digital transformation progresses.

As the world and healthcare have moved toward digital advancement, we have continually added tools to better focus and manage resources toward what’s most important to the business side of healthcare organizations.

What Healthcare Technology Solutions Can Help?

Mitigating security threats, keeping IT costs low, and providing the best possible care might all seem like competing priorities, but they’re essential to moving healthcare organizations forward. A singular cloud platform, such as ServiceNow, creates a direct alignment between critical business capabilities, so organizations aren’t piecing together data from disparate systems to make business decisions.

When developing solutions, CTG’s goal is to understand what matters most to healthcare organizations from a service standpoint to retain business. For example, for a hospital to make money, it needs to be able to admit patients. How does that work through digital transformation? In the case of admissions, that can all be done digitally or through automation. That makes the process easier for both the patient and the provider. When filling out forms is easier for the patient, the healthcare provider has increased efficiency in a crucial area. When the healthcare organization has a singular cloud platform, all the patient’s data is right there for the provider to see, which helps improve workflows and prevent inefficiency-induced slowdowns.

This affects healthcare in another way: Patients who would usually just go to the nearest hospital might opt to go to a hospital where they know that admission will be easier, as well as the overall patient experience. So, it is crucial for hospitals to adapt to digital transformation, as patients can now choose the quality of their care. Forward-thinking, successful organizations will look at the patient experience they implement to create loyal customers—patients who will promote their services—just like any other business would.

A singular cloud platform helps the patient, the provider, and the business. Through automation, a cloud platform can highlight what is important, itemize tasks in terms of importance, and help you figure out where to best allocate funds. It can also mitigate the following challenges facing healthcare organizations:

1. Streamlined security alerts.

IT infrastructure faces continuous cyberthreats, especially when it comes to personal and financial information. Instead of spending hours looking for alerts, the process can be automated through ServiceNow. Chances are, an operation as big as a medical network will come across thousands of alerts. ServiceNow can help prioritize which alerts to deal with first.

2. Solidified business priorities and outcomes.

Automation helps organizations understand their full business context to make strategic decisions. By utilizing collected data, ServiceNow can help an organization determine business priorities and offer a clearer idea of certain outcomes—which also helps decision makers assess what not to do.

Having all your data in one spot not only eases the process for both patient and provider, but it can also give a healthcare organization a leg up on competitors. As healthcare undergoes rapid digital transformation, relying on a data-driven process is key, and it’s crucial to have healthcare technology solutions to support that.

Want to learn more about the effects of digital transformation on the healthcare industry? Download our report, “Continued Acceleration—Digital Transformation in 2022.”

Contact a CTG expert today to learn more about ServiceNow and how you can benefit.

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