"Why are healthcare providers, including clinical laboratories and pathology groups, so slow to recognize and adopt the same service innovations developed by non-healthcare industries?"
Dark Daily poses this question in its recent article, "Institute of Medicine Report Finds Healthcare Management Lags Behind Other Industries." The article highlights some of the findings from a recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, which shows that when it comes to quality, outcomes, cost, and equity, healthcare falls short -- especially when compared to other industries.
Lack of patient accessibility to records, necessary testing that results in wasted dollars, lack of consistency, and poor coordination among healthcare providers are some of the specific shortcomings examined by the IOM report.
According to IOM committee chair Mark D. Smith, M.D., M.B.A., President and CEO, California HealthCare Foundation, Oakland, "Effective transformation of U.S. healthcare systems is not a question of lack of information or tools."
But does this statement ring true for medical laboratories? Yes, medical labs have an abundance of data. But laboratory executives face an ongoing challenge with this data, which is translating the endless data contained in various systems – spanning the lab information management system, operations, customer service, marketing, billing, finance, and logistics – into the real-time intelligence. Without access to real-time healthcare business intelligence, how can labs pinpoint important trends related to volume, TAT, provider-related errors, lab-related errors, etc. which may have a major impact upon patient care? Or proactively notify hospitals of hospital-acquired infections (HAI's)?
If lab personnel is stuck logging into 4-5 systems on a daily basis in an effort to access a complete picture of a single provider, how in the world will service ever reach the same "superior" level that other industries are broadly attaining?
hc1.com is a healthcare customer relationship management solution (also known as a healthcare CRM) that makes it possible for labs to quickly and easily transform disparate data into healthcare business intelligence that leads to confident decisions and timely and informed actions among the entire lab staff that ultimately translates into improved patient care.
Learn more about hc1.com with the Dark Report's new whitepaper, Proven Strategies That Go Beyond Clinical Excellence: Combining Lab-Specific CRM and Healthcare Business Intelligence to Differentiate Your Clinical Laboratory or Pathology Group.
