Tag: Electronic Health Records

Patient Journey or Customer Journey? How Salesforce’s CRM Aims to Reposition the EHR

Nov 3, 2022

BY JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

While at Dreamforce 2022, one of most thought-provoking things I heard was that, in order to really meet the needs of the healthcare consumer, we in healthcare need to once-and-for-all let go of the idea that there will be “one tech system to rule them all” and adopt an “and both” approach that integrates both the EHR and a CRM. The EHR is how we’ll “know the patient” and the CRM is how we’ll “know the customer.”

Dr. Geeta Nayyar, Salesforce’s SVP & Chief Medical Officer and Amit Khanna, SVP & GM of Salesforce’s Health & Life Sciences business join me to unpack this “and both” approach to infrastructure technology and talk all-things healthcare consumer. The paradigm shift that comes with this duality – we are at times “patients”, we are at times “customers” – is a big one. Especially in healthcare.

Dr. G speaks to the strategy that Salesforce is operating under to take its tech further into the healthcare and life sciences space, while Amit introduces us to some of the new Healthcare 360 product features launched at Dreamforce that fully show-off Salesforce’s expertise at integrating different technology solutions (Slack, MuleSoft, telehealth) and making perfect sense of massive amounts of real-time data (longitudinal record, health scoring).

As Salesforce advances further into the health market with more care-forward features in its CRM and a strategic focus on healthcare-important issues like improving equity and access to care, will our traditional view of the importance of the EHR change? What if the replacement tech comes with ‘self-service at-scale’ and more ‘seamless experiences?’ Could we head away from “and both” and choose CRM “instead of?” Tune in – the EHR IT infrastructure may have finally met its match!

What Can Meaningful Use Learn From Healthcare.gov?

Mar 2, 2015• 18

By FRED TROTTER

The US has spent several billion dollars on medical records, as part of the HITECH program. The goal of that spend was simple: portable medical records for patients. On our current path, we will have medical records, but without that magic word: “portable.” Ironically, the reason for this is identical to the root-cause of the problems with healthcare.gov

The root-cause of the initial failure of healthcare.gov was a lack of accountability and empowerment. There was no one person who was in charge of the operation, and those who were presumed to be in charge did not have the skill-set or political clout needed to make decisions about the project.

The result was the healthcare.gov train wreck. Thankfully, healthcare.gov was turned around.

That turn-around was the result of decisively fixing these exact issues.

Accountability restored, disaster averted.

You would think that the Obama administration and HHS would have learned the “accountability with empowerment” lesson well, if not for IT projects generally, then at least for projects involving Health IT.

Yet we are repeating this mistake with Meaningful Use. For those who are living in a cave with regards to healthcare reform, Meaningful Use is a set of standards designed to ensure that the money that the federal government spends on Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs) for doctors results in clinically productive outcomes.

Actually, We’d Probably All Be Better Off With Our Health Records on Facebook

Jan 6, 2014• 19

By Melissa McCormack

A Facebook user’s timeline provides both a snapshot of who that user is and a historical record of the user’s activity on Facebook. My Facebook timeline is about me, and fittingly, I control it. It’s also one, single profile. Anyone I allow to view my timeline views my timeline—they don’t each create their own copies of it.

Intuitive, right? So why don’t medical records work that way? There is no unified, single patient record—every doctor I’ve ever visited has his or her own separate copy of my records. And in an age where we can conduct banking transactions on my smartphone, many patients still can’t access or contribute to the medical records their doctors keep for them.

My proposal? Medical records should follow Facebook’s lead.

Cross-industry innovation isn’t new. BMW borrowed from the tech world to create its iDrive; Fischer Sports reduced the oscillation of its skis by using a technologycreated for stringed instruments. So I asked myself: Who has mastered the user-centric storing and sharing platform? The more I thought about it, the more I decided a Facebook timeline approach could be just what medical records need.

To see what I mean, let’s explore some of Facebook timeline’s key features to see how each could map to features of the ideal medical record.

“About” for Complete, Patient-Informed Medical History

On Facebook: The “about” section is the one that most closely resembles the concept of a user profile. It includes a picture selected by the user and lists information such as gender; relationship status; age, political and religious views; interests and hobbies; favorite quotes, books and movies; and free-form biographical information added by the user.

In medical records: The “about” section would be a snapshot of the patient’s health and background. It should include the patient’s age, gender, smoking status, height, weight, address, phone number, and emergency contact information; the patient’s primary care provider; and insurance information. This section would include a summary list of the patient’s current diagnoses and medications, as well as family history. And importantly, both the doctor and the patient would be able to add details.

“Privacy Settings” and “Permissions” for Controlled Sharing

On Facebook: Privacy settings allow users to control who can see the information they post or that is posted about them. For example, in my general privacy settings I can choose to make my photos visible only to the people I’ve accepted as “friends.” However, if I post a photo I want the entire world to see, I can change the default setting for that photo to be visible publicly instead.

Facebook also allows users to grant “permissions” for outside applications to access their profiles. For example, let’s say I use TripAdvisor to read travel reviews. TripAdvisor lets me sign in to its site using my Facebook account, rather than creating a separate TripAdvisor account. But, to do this I must grant TripAdvisor “permission” to access my Facebook account.

In medical records: Patients could use “privacy settings” to control whether all or part of their information can be seen by a family member or caregiver. For
example, if my aging mother wanted to give me access to her “events” (upcoming doctor’s appointments), she could do so. If my college-aged son who is still on my health plan wanted to give me access to his knee X-rays, he could.