Sentara Well being, a well being system serving Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina, has undergone a metamorphosis to what it calls One Sentara – a strategic aligning of its supplier and payer organizations to create a seamless and inexpensive expertise for its prospects.
THE PROBLEM
Previous to the One Sentara re-alignment, the care supply aspect and well being plan aspect functioned as nearly two impartial companies. That usually led to affected person and member abrasion with duplication of companies comparable to care administration.
It additionally contributed to a notion by sufferers and members that the well being system didn’t “know” them.
“The One Sentara transformation permits us to create shared companies that present a high-quality, consumer-centric and constant expertise,” mentioned Tim Skeen, govt vp and CIO at Sentara Well being. “It is about making healthcare interplay extra easy, seamless, private and inexpensive, from finish to finish.”
PROPOSAL
It is necessary to grasp that the One Sentara strategic alignment has at its middle the customers, Skeen defined.
“They’re the main target of all that we do,” he mentioned. “As an built-in healthcare supply community, we knew we wanted to extra intently align, and streamline, our supply of care together with our healthcare protection processes.
“To this finish, Sentara is migrating from fragmented affected person interactions to a holistic view of our sufferers and members,” he continued. “Sufferers aren’t acute or ambulatory, they’re simply individuals who want care. Usually the language of healthcare is complicated at a time when folks want readability probably the most.”
To unravel this drawback, Sentara is implementing a scientific entry middle the place it has centralized scheduling, answering calls, and aligning a affected person to the fitting scientific useful resource and referrals.
“Coupled with the scientific entry middle, we’re implementing an omnichannel expertise and desire administration, which can permit sufferers to obtain the data they want from the channel they like,” Skeen famous. “We’re seeing extraordinarily constructive leads to post-encounter surveys with our members and sufferers because of the adjustments we’re implementing.
“Sufferers are now not on maintain or left voicemail, they’re talking to folks and receiving the digital suggestions interactions they anticipate,” he continued. “Moreover, as we implement these enhancements, we’re uncovering quite a few alternatives for optimization and key processes throughout our supply system.”
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
The One Sentara transformation creates a necessity for a constant platform for care administration whereas enabling value-based contract efficiency for the built-in well being system, Skeen mentioned.
“It is very important bear in mind we’re by no means carried out in terms of enhancing the shopper expertise,” he defined. “As wants change, so will expertise, and we have to preserve our fingers on the heartbeat to make sure we’re efficient.
“Two key strategic initiatives we have now launched on our enterprise information platform embrace the Shopper Information Hub and the Enterprise Information Material,” he continued. “The Shopper Information Hub will present a safe 360-degree view of the buyer – encompassing members, sufferers or prospects – to complement our understanding and interplay with them.”
Equally, the Enterprise Information Material will unify the various information sources, providing speedy entry and enabling superior analytics powered by AI and machine studying.
“These efforts are designed to reinforce information administration and governance, guaranteeing easy integration and entry throughout the group and with companions; and drive data-driven decision-making and extremely customized shopper experiences, setting a brand new benchmark in service excellence,” Skeen mentioned.
Key focuses embrace:
-
Mastering shopper information, creating detailed profiles for higher engagement
-
Mastering supplier information, guaranteeing healthcare professionals’ information is meticulously managed
The target is to transcend operational effectivity, fostering extra insightful decision-making and a tailor-made method to seize shopper interplay.
“Moreover, we’re investing in a real-time Buyer Expertise Dashboard, offering suggestions loops to zero-in on points and join operational leaders to ache factors,” Skeen defined. “Our staff is targeted on discovering the ache factors, delivering on adjustments and offering a steady suggestions loop for enhancements.
“As a part of Sentara’s enterprise-wide deal with shopper expertise, we have now re-platformed our total buyer expertise platform with the newest expertise,” he added. “This consists of digitizing all pre-arrival paperwork, registration and questionnaires to make the preliminary interplay course of extra seamless and streamlined.”
A couple of key examples of different adjustments embrace implementing new giant language mannequin platforms to route affected person inquiries to the right queues and reduce supplier burnout. Workers are renovating the complete entry digital expertise for bigger flexibility with appointments and rescheduling.
“We are also redesigning our communications to assist queueing affected person requests in opposition to the right sources,” he famous. “For instance, pharmacy refills go to a specialised staff and rescheduling is dealt with in our new Medical Entry Middle – liberating clinicians to deal with affected person care.
“Utilizing exterior information to enrich our scientific information to attain a fuller image of our sufferers and members is significant to our mission,” he continued. “We’re incorporating social determinants of well being information in quite a lot of our initiatives each in the neighborhood and inside the system.”
Sentara Well being makes use of publicly obtainable information like census information and applies it to geocoded evaluation to look at the traits of its sufferers, members and communities. It additionally incorporates information from third-party aggregators that use broader SDOH data so as to add particular predictors of danger throughout quite a lot of situations like diabetes and congestive coronary heart failure, in addition to particular occasions like ED visits and hospitalizations.
RESULTS
“2023 was an thrilling yr for all of us right here at Sentara, and we’re equally enthusiastic about what 2024 holds for us,” Skeen mentioned. “We launched our new strategic plan, ‘One Sentara: Our Means Ahead,’ with the target to create a easy, seamless, private and extra inexpensive expertise for these we serve.
“A key part of this effort was the institution of a brand new division, the Transformation Workplace,” he famous. “This workplace serves as a hub for driving change, fostering innovation and guaranteeing efforts are aligned with strategic priorities. We consider this workplace can be instrumental in serving to us create a well being system that’s much more consumer-centered and industry-leading.”
Areas the place Sentara Well being has already seen success, in accordance with Skeen, embrace:
-
Construction. Exhausting-wired capabilities throughout the group have resulted in elevated transparency and accountability with the implementation of uniform instruments and processes for all initiatives. This consists of creating infrastructures that purposefully deliver collectively the affected person and member experiences.
-
Engagement. Leaders from throughout the group have come collectively to ideate, plan and implement initiatives together with launching a systemwide ideation software. Additionally, launching new cultural attributes that align with the brand new strategic plan.
-
Investing. A foundational functionality to serve sufferers and members. From these foundations the well being system is enabling new fashions of care and extra seamless interactions, and lowering administrative anxiousness in areas like invoice pay, lab scheduling, lowering paperwork and establishing an engagement middle.
ADVICE FOR OTHERS
“Interact your staff members broadly and deeply to determine alternatives to attain the technique,” Skeen suggested. “The technique can’t be executed in a silo with a small set of leaders given the crucial dependency on organizational change administration and tradition change.
“Create a prioritized portfolio of initiatives ranked by enterprise and monetary worth,” he added. “Instill a way of urgency to execute on the best valued initiatives targeted on early wins whereas taking a multi-year method to attain complete transformation.”
Comply with Invoice’s HIT protection on LinkedIn: Invoice Siwicki
E-mail him: [email protected]
Healthcare IT Information is a HIMSS Media publication.