By Cindy Gaines, Chief Clinical Transformation Officer, Lumeon
How clinical workflow automation delivers rapid clinical, operational, and patient experience benefits
A symphony orchestra can produce some of the most beautiful music ever written, but only when the orchestra is conducted by a maestro who knows how to artfully wield their baton.
Absent a skilled conductor, a large ensemble of musicians — however talented each may be individually — won’t be able to produce the aesthetically pleasing sounds we’ve come to associate with Mozart, Beethoven, and other master composers. Instead, what will emerge is a cacophony of instruments – think of an orchestra tuning up before a performance.
Effective healthcare delivery also requires the equivalent of a conductor to orchestrate the activities of care teams and patients. The difference is, in healthcare, the conductor role can be filled by information technology (IT), specifically clinical workflow automation.
Lumeon has optimized clinical workflow automation for care orchestration: the configuration of multiple tasks undertaken by multiple people into one complete end-to-end process or workflow. Care orchestration automates many of the functions – the tasks, the workflow, the events, and the activities – that today are performed manually, calling on clinical intervention as and when required.
Technically, care orchestration involves synthesizing all the information that’s coming from the patient and from all the different systems – ambulatory and acute care EHRs, imaging systems, specialized departmental systems – that contain data relevant to the patient’s care journey; and then applying deterministic algorithms to guide the most appropriate next steps for each individual patient. The result is personalized care, at scale, delivered more efficiently and consistently.
Notably, care orchestration bridges the wide gap between clinical intent and clinical action – a pervasive problem that existing technology, including electronic health records (EHRs), digital front doors, and patient engagement solutions, aren’t able to do. Care orchestration does this by calculating the next best step for the individual patient and then automating its execution and flagging any issues that arise. This reduces or eliminates inefficiencies and enables best practices at scale, which gives care teams more time for patient care, vastly improving the patient experience. From a broader organizational perspective, automated care orchestration enables healthcare providers to massively improve staff productivity and efficiency – especially vital given today’s severe staff shortages – and to have a direct positive impact on the patient and clinician experience.
With the healthcare industry facing multiple concurrent challenges – spiraling costs, squeezed revenues, and workforce challenges – there’s a sense of urgency around finding efficiencies in care delivery. Automated care orchestration gives providers a SaaS platform in their toolbox that can be rapidly deployed to drive such efficiency while at the same time delivering higher quality care and a better overall experience to both providers and patients. That’s healthcare’s version of beautiful music.
Read more about the introduction of Lumeon Conductor and the benefits it is bringing to Healthcare Providers here.