Things move quickly in the
healthcare and life sciences fields: innovation is rapid, prompted both
by market pressures and medical imperatives. Medicine and leading-edge
science walk hand in hand. Administratively, the industry is “required
to ensure that safe drugs are on the market, medical data is kept
private, and patients are cared for by licensed professionals.” – Care for Your Customers
In
spite of healthcare’s culture of innovation, recent developments have
taken healthcare providers by surprise, revealing new margins for
improvement that they are now scrambling to fill. Patients have become
more adept at researching their conditions and selecting their own menu
of treatments and providers, and concurrently the payment and billing
infrastructure has opened up in recent years, especially with the
growth of the health savings account (HSA). All of this speaks to the
need for more individualized patient consideration. Customer-driven
healthcare is emerging now, and today’s evolving CRM is the answer.
“So what do consumers really want? They want, and
increasingly expect, to give hospitals relevant information only once
and to have all of their records, from treatment to billing, be
accurate and accessible by all departments on demand.
“As more banks are stepping into the picture to process debits against HSA
accounts, consumers and hospitals alike must be able to understand not
only the cost of the services but also the availability of payment for
those services.
“These new systems, then, must connect the front-end
processes with the back end; procuring payment in a timely, accurate
manner and with minimal impact to the hospital’s workflow—and minimal
additional contact with the patient on billing matters.” – Meeting the ‘Happy Patient’ Benchmark
All of this data connection into one
intelligent system speaks of integration, the great challenge of all IT
systems. Dovetail Software’s own dealings with the healthcare industry
– with clients such as Philips Medical, Intuitive Surgical, Pacificare, and Bio-Rad
– have made use of Dovetail’s signature ease of integration. And for
rationalizing data systems, Dovetail Web Services may provide a key to
the puzzle for linking with non-Clarify applications in the following
suggested ways:
- Medical Imaging & Archival
Systems: Have patient care information in one place including links to
the medical imaging archival systems such as your PAC system for streamlined use.
- Payer
Transaction Systems: Link patient care data to payer transaction
systems for faster turnaround on payments for the healthcare provider
and patient.
- Electronic Data Collection: Maintain clinical
trial information from sponsor, investigator, and patient for more
efficient, accurate clinical trials. – Heal your Business Operations
