Enabling Better Patient Experiences with Home Health and Field Service Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst for change, creating a shift in business priorities across the healthcare industry. Home health care became an urgent need for most providers — mainly to continue to service patients while meeting strict safety protocols.

Even before the pandemic, though, health providers were feeling pressure to offer more differentiated care offerings to improve the patient experience, help grow the business, and offset the increasing shortage of frontline workers who were burned out and leaving the industry. The pandemic just exacerbated everything.

Challenges of home health care have remained the same. Disparate systems and information sources, paper-based tasks and processes, and manual scheduling are just some of the issues that continue to waste time and effort, and make it hard to manage patient loads and provide the service excellence they expect.

To survive and thrive, healthcare providers have had to reimagine the home health journey and find new approaches that make them efficient, agile, and resilient. Luckily, there has been a wave of innovations around cloud connectivity, automation, and mobility that have centralized data, automated operations, optimized scheduling, and routing, and provided visibility into the entire process from mobile devices. These technology advancements have helped speed and simplify much-needed digital transformation for healthcare.

80% of healthcare providers plan on increasing their investment in technology and digital solutions over the next five years.

In our recent Mobile Health Services with Hitachi Solutions & Microsoft webinar, healthcare and field service experts from Hitachi Solutions and Microsoft discuss the latest industry challenges, technologies, and scenarios around home healthcare. We also cover how we work together to solve these issues through data and business system modernization, AI and analytics, data insights, mobile connectivity, and more:

Home Health Technology Trends

Data is key to helping today’s healthcare organizations become proactive and personal. Being able to leverage the data you already have is what creates a frictionless experience and actionable insights for improving care while lowering costs. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare infuses data and intelligence everywhere. It provides trusted and integrated capabilities that make it easier to create personalized patient experiences, give care teams secure collaboration tools, and adopts data standards that are important to healthcare.

Together with advances in AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics, technology is transforming the future of work in healthcare in an exciting way that will hopefully attract and retain frontline workers as well as:

• Elevate patient engagement
• Enable health team collaboration
• Enhance clinician experiences
• Improve clinical and operational insights

Hitachi Solutions’ healthcare practice aligns with Microsoft’s Cloud for Healthcare vision. We strive to help customers leverage Cloud for Healthcare offerings through our deep industry and Microsoft technology expertise, healthcare-focused IP solutions, skilled and experienced data and AI practitioners, 360⁰ advisory services, and best-practice delivery excellence.

Proven Success

New technology and solutions can be scary and companies might be hesitant to adopt them, especially when the stakes are so high. At Hitachi Solutions, we’ve helped several healthcare providers extend health services to the home and field — before, during, and after the pandemic. And we’ve done it quickly, with amazing outcomes.

In one engagement, a leading provider of laboratory and diagnostic services and digital health connectivity systems sought to improve its customer experience and grow its market share. They partnered with Hitachi Solutions to develop an automated online booking service that would allow for medical diagnostic testing to be performed in the comfort of a customer’s home, as well as at care facilities.

Developed in less than four months, the Microsoft Dynamics 365- and Power Platform-based solution synchronized field operations with clinical operations to put data at their fingertips optimized appointments and scheduling to provide visibility to frontline workers and patients and made the overall experience less stressful and more efficient. It introduced convenient, white-glove services for customers that helped the company expand its brand and market share.

Key Use Case Benefits:

• Easy and smooth online experience offering a desirable and convenient choice for patients and caregivers
• Intuitive mobile experiences that enable and enhance frontline worker effectiveness and adoption
• Intelligent field operations automation that delivers efficiencies and serves as an innovative platform
• Quick time to value and ability to scale
• Tested in high urgency requirements for Covid testing

This same customer was also able to quickly pivot this mobile technology from home health care to automated COVID testing for travelers on a national scale during the pandemic. Having been asked by the government, we developed a cost-effective mobile commerce and scheduling platform, virtual appointments, and personalized portals, despite rapidly changing travel requirements. With the solution, the customer was able to confidently and reliably service hundreds of thousands of travelers within just a few weeks.

Ready to Reimagine Home Healthcare?

Watch our on-demand webinar, Mobile Health Services with Hitachi Solutions & Microsoft to hear more solution details and customer success stories, and get the bigger picture of how we support healthcare organizations to improve their customer and clinician experience. You’ll also hear attendees’ real-world concerns and our expert responses to their queries.

• How do you ensure home health resources have the proper skills and tools when they go onsite?
• How do you proactively schedule visits?
• What’s the best way to start a home health initiative?

These are a few of the questions covered. View the on-demand webinar at your convenience and if you have any questions, or would like to take a dive deeper into any of the topics, please reach out today.

Whether you’re already on the path to digital modernization or are just starting your journey, there are many things to consider along the way. Working with a knowledgeable partner from the beginning — who has the industry, processes, and technology expertise — is critical to successfully meeting your home healthcare goals. Hitachi Solutions is that partner and we look forward to connecting with you to help you deliver the differentiated experiences you need to stay competitive in this dynamic and digital age.