When healthcare vendors invoked the help of digital transformation during the pandemic to keep their doors open for business, it opened the digital door to a new approach to delivering patient-centric care that heightened the patient experience. But experts recognize that vendors offer different interpretations of the digital front door and where they fit within the overall healthcare delivery system. 

“Digital transformation puts the patient in the position of power as a healthcare consumer,” says Sara Heath, adding that “It’s not a door, it’s a wraparound patient journey that connects them to care across the continuum.” 

But in the spirit of simplifying processes via a digital front door designed with the patient in mind, why is it that they feel overwhelmed amid what should be patient-centric care?

That was a central topic at this year’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Conference held in Las Vegas, NV, on August 9 –12th. 

Dave Muoio of Fierce Healthcare reported on the panel discussion. 

“While one might be hard-pressed to find experts at HIMSS21 or any other health tech industry event that would argue the contrary, some stakeholders are calling for a more tactical approach to deployment,” he writes. “They say the deluge of near-equivalent digital tools has reached the point where it is often harming the patient—or health consumer—experience.”

The four-person panel, comprised of some of health tech’s up-and-coming voices, included Dennis Weaver, MD, chief clinical officer at Oscar Health, Buddy Njere, MST, MBA, from AstraZeneca, Rachel Parlier of Route 66 Ventures, and Jayneel Patel, PhD., VP, Healthcare Center of Excellence at Simplus. 

“Completely agree on the state of the union when it comes to the healthcare ecosystem,” said Jayneel. “What’s missing right now is a way to bring all of that together … where you literally put the patient in the center and bring everything else together to make the overall experience more cohesive.

The panel addressed the challenges provider organizations face in coordinating consumer-driven digital experiences. Dennis added that the HLS ecosystem would need a “river guide” to collect and coordinate digital and in-person services.  

“Who can deliver a comprehensive experience, the complete experience that can create value [with] the best clinical outcomes at a total cost-of-care price that’s going to be effective?” he said. “The future of this is that the business models are going to go that way. If you can develop that comprehensive business model, then I think there’s a number of buyers that exist: employers are going to be interested in that [and] insurers are going to be interested in that.”

Jayneel was optimistic about this discussion and looks forward to future narratives on aligning digital transformation in healthcare. He later posted on LinkedIn,  “It was a great discussion at #himss21. We are united in our thoughts to make the Care Management patient-centric and to explore approaches that further unite the fragmented applications and use cases into one cohesive experience #simplus #salesforce. HIMSS21 may be over but our work is only beginning. Awareness is the first step, (#patientadvocate) and I am proud to say that we accomplished that at HIMSS21!

To read the full Fierce Healthcare article, click here.