Effectiveness of information management and its impact on improving the patient experience

By Jesús Santiago, Vice President Strategic Sales, Ricoh Latin America

The way data is captured, transformed, and managed in the healthcare ecosystem has a huge impact on the patient experience. So how can you optimize the way you manage information, whether structured or unstructured, to leave a positive and lasting impression?

For example, a patient arrives on time for their initial visit to the cardiology department of the hospital. As he goes through his appointment, he must go to three separate departments to complete tests, and at each stop, he must complete additional, seemingly repetitive, paperwork. During a follow-up visit several weeks later, a physician is unable to locate the lab results in his electronic medical record and, as a result, orders the same test that was completed during the initial encounter.

Not surprisingly, the lack of information flow during this patient's visit has major implications for his overall experience, regardless of the actual outcome of care. Frustrated with duplicate documentation and additional costs due to unnecessary testing, the patient begins to question the quality of care he received. The subsequent consequences grow as he communicates his irritation and concern with family and friends, who share the situation with others in the community. This produces negative perceptions of the hospital, which may cause patients to seek out other providers and facilities.

Simultaneously, when patient receives a survey requesting feedback on their care, they quickly give the organization low scores for patient satisfaction by recalling the lack of communication among their care team. Finally, the domino effect culminates when the patient's insurance company includes the survey scores in their provider's reimbursement calculations. As a result of the low scores, the hospital's reimbursement and revenues are reduced.

This hypothetical scenario demonstrates why patient experience is a priority among providers in the healthcare ecosystem. However, improving the patient experience can seem overwhelming because it involves multiple touchpoints across the organization, from pre-registration to discharge to billing.

Advances in technology are helping to optimize secure access, user interfaces, customer service, and quality assurance. On the provider side, effective use of technology must begin with seamless, end-to-end data capture for efficient document management across business operations, clinical care departments, and the broader continuum of care community.

This leads to greater information mobility - the ability to access the information you need anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Having the information, whether paper or digital, improves communication between staff and patients, which contributes to the quality of care, patient safety, staff efficiency, organizational reputation, and revenue.

To help achieve this level of information mobility across the entire ecosystem, it is already possible to develop and implement these concepts in these five key areas:

Paper capture: A patient fills out the same information on multiple forms during a visit, which hurts the patient experience even before care begins. Organizations can proactively change this situation by knowing, as they enter data on paper, the exact points where it should be accessible and how to capture, transform, and manage it efficiently.

This requires a careful review of how unstructured data capture affects workflows and patient care, whether positively or negatively. Effective paper-based data management goes far beyond simply adding content to the Electronic Health Record; it impacts quality of care and safety while improving staff efficiency and contributing to a positive patient experience.

Workflow: Hospitals can optimize workflows that lead to connected care and informed decisions. In reviewing basic information capture and flows, it is essential to consider how:

• Delays affect patient care, business operations, and the overall experience.
• Information is captured so that data needed at every point in the patient experience (registration, admission, care, discharge, referral, billing, and follow-up visits) is available.
• Simultaneous data is captured, managed, tracked, and verified.
• Lack of information can lead to redundant and unnecessary procedures that pose financial, clinical, and patient safety burdens.
• In many cases, workflows can be improved to make information more mobile and accessible. For example, notifications to healthcare

Healthcare providers alerting them to updates to a patient's records in real-time can help improve access to information.

Adequate IT infrastructure: Organisations should ensure that they have an IT infrastructure that is connected and integrated to their needs. It may also be useful to view the electronic health record as a data repository. It is vital to look at other solutions for the functionality needed to capture, transform, and manage information, as well as provide the required reporting and analysis. When evaluating these solutions, consider how the technology handles additional data from external sources. Also analyze, for example, how a solution could merge more patient data into a single system as healthcare trends and initiatives evolve. Finally, it is also important that interoperability standards are met and that systems communicate with each other.

Reporting and data analytics: Successfully capturing and understanding analytics helps determine which areas of the patient experience could be improved, as well as which processes are working well. Information that can be gathered through reporting includes readmission statistics, accurate documentation for reimbursement, and even responses to patient surveys. All can shed light on important aspects of organizational processes. At the same time, it is important to plan and budget for tools that extract data into a structured format.

Consistent staff training: Creating and maintaining a successful information flow in an organization depends on consistently training people to understand healthcare processes. Consider designating "super users" with current and practical knowledge of the system. While knowledge of basic tools and technology is necessary, these trainers will also be able to adjust training as needed through problem-solving. As a result of their findings, they will be able to recalibrate to help the system function properly in a variety of areas and situations.

In conclusion, regardless of how information is captured, whether on paper or electronically, without a robust data management plan and workflow, some information will be lost, and this can hurt the patient experience. For example, if all required data is not captured upfront as a patient passes through the organization, caregivers will not always have adequate documentation to identify illnesses and problems. Similarly, the business office may not have the correct data to produce an accurate and timely invoice. That's why Ricoh Healthcare Division provides institutions with consultancy and tailored solutions so they can seamlessly capture, transform, and manage data, efficiently routing information to the right place at the right time with high security. This undoubtedly helps to improve the overall quality of care, which is the ultimate goal of the patient experience.