In an age of digitisation, all industries are rapidly turning to solutions like unified communications, in search of opportunities to improve productivity, efficiency, and cost savings. Healthcare is just one of the many sectors beginnings to see the advantages of unified communications as a service.
Some leading companies even offer dedicated solutions built specifically to enable today’s healthcare brands. For instance, Microsoft, provide of the most popular UCaaS tool on the market today, has dedicated healthcare technology designed to ensure compliant, secure, and efficient teamwork in the sector. Today, we’re going to be taking a closer look at just one example of how Microsoft is innovating in the healthcare sector.
For this case study deep dive, we’re examining the collaboration between St Luke’s University Health Network, and Microsoft.
Transforming Healthcare with St Luke’s and Microsoft
Technology has long played a significant part in St Luke’s strategy for differentiating. According to the team, the expansion of healthcare regulations and access to increasing amounts of data is placing increased pressure on healthcare teams. Technology which enables better communication and collaboration is therefore critical to improving patient experience and keeping healthcare organisations running smoothly.
Through the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, SLUHN employees access powerful tools for customer service and team collaboration. The team chose Microsoft’s system to replace otherwise complex and manual strategies for keeping teams connected and providing patients with crucial information.
The Microsoft 365 technology deployed by SLUHN also makes it easier for the medical professionals in the group to collect important information, while better-connecting distributed employees. Clinical communications now happen through Microsoft Teams to allow for a comprehensive single workspace for all team members, no matter where they are. The messaging and conferencing environment allows for convenient, yet highly secure and HIPAA-compliant conversations.
Teams even works with the existing scheduling app and EMR solution already used by SLUHN, so the team could integrate the technology without ripping and replacing essential tools. Interoperability between the SLUHN EMR solution and teams means users can also pull information out of the EMR into Teams, so care providers can access crucial details in urgent situations.
This interoperability, combined with the overall fast-paced functionality of Teams is driving a number of positive outcomes for the SLUHN team. According to the company, the highly secure chat and document collaboration features in Teams allow clinicians to coordinate care and resolve issues more rapidly, allowing for improved patient outcomes.
Enabling Teams for a New Era of Care
Through Microsoft 365 and Teams, the SLUHN team can provide a streamlined environment where employees from anywhere can share information and collaborate with specialists securely. According to the staff at St Luke’s Teams is making employees more efficient and organised, so they can focus more of their time on supporting their patients.
SLUHN even uses Teams to improve patient care for specific care provider groups. For instance, the Venous Thromboembolism teams uses Power BI dashboards in Teams to monitor patient information within the Teams environment in real-time. Another initiative, known as the Pulmonary Teams Practice Management pilot, allows dozens of therapists, administrators, and specialist care providers to come together and discuss general practice operations, or access specific support.
SLUHN has placed significant importance on delivering amazing patient experiences for several years now. The company previously worked with Microsoft technology to develop an app which would help providers in the healthcare industry improve their people skills. Previously, the St Luke’s team focused on manual feedback collected during patient interviews to learn more about customer experiences.
