Over the course of the last year, the healthcare industry has become front and center for people all around the world. There’s never been more pressure for healthcare providers to deliver a better level of service for their patients – while making more efficient use of the time and money they have. In this blog, we discuss how Platform as a Service technology like the Microsoft Power Platform for healthcare can help healthcare providers deliver more with less.
1. Customize your patient care
The Power Platform has wide potential to improve the service that you offer to your patients by enabling self-service functionality. With Power Apps in healthcare, you can create your own customer-facing healthcare apps, giving people the ability to access medical records, book appointments, and carry out basic customer service tasks on their own. This gives you the potential to automate much of the day–to–day management of your patients, saving time for you and making it much easier for customers to find the information they need.
Consider, for example, if a patient needs to book an appointment for a regular checkup. Traditionally, they would have to call the receptionist, discuss the details of the appointment, and then set a date. This creates a lot of work for the receptionist, and a lot of hurdles for the patient to get over before the appointment can be made. But with an entirely automated process, the patient can simply submit the request automatically from their mobile device, and then receive the confirmation effortlessly by text or email.
2. Improve data collection and analysis
In any industry, data is an incredibly valuable asset. Healthcare providers hold a wealth of data and understanding how to use it effectively can make a big difference to the quality of service you provide. For instance, if data is locked in monolithic Excel spreadsheets, it may lack the ease of visibility and oversight that’s needed for effective and fast decision-making.
It doesn’t even necessarily need to be informed about the patients themselves. Better access to information about logistics, costs, and insurance plans can help healthcare providers better match up the medicine resources they have with the needs of the patients they’re treating.
Power BI can help with all of the above. Microsoft’s tool for built–in data analysis gives healthcare providers the capabilities they need to generate fast and actionable insights from the data they process. This could involve, billing, financial information, patient records, and much more. Whatever the content, visibility can make a big difference to both the agility and quality of the service you deliver.
3. Automating manual processes
A business can only be as efficient as its processes – and this is as true in healthcare as it is anywhere else. The faster these services can take place, the more effective, targeted and economical the service you offer will be. Consider, for instance, compliance processes – which have traditionally required considerable time and effort from healthcare providers. Processes around data protection and information protection require administrators to devote a lot of work to making sure information and documents are saved in the right places and stored for the right period of time.
These processes are ripe for automation, which helps healthcare providers to conserve their valuable resources. And that’s where Power Automate comes in. This process automation software helps businesses of all kinds to design their own automatic processes. Whether it’s compliance, contacting patients, or saving files in the right place – there’s wide potential to accelerate and improve these common tasks.
Deliver more with the Power Platform for healthcare
Through Power BI, Power Automate and PowerApps in healthcare, providers everywhere will have the tools they need to deliver a better level of service for their patients and customers. But crucially, the healthcare providers themselves stand to benefit from reducing their costs. Time is money, of course, and every second a skilled healthcare professional spends doing tedious manual work is money wasted.
The same is true for data analysis. If your doctors and nurses are spending time digging through spreadsheets to make important decisions, there’s a good chance that time can be better spent elsewhere. Superior data visibility means your doctors and nurses can spend more time with patients – giving you more value for the resources you’ve invested.
Together, the Power Platform’s tools give your healthcare company the capabilities you need to provide a better deal for patients and doctors – while also saving valuable resources. Everybody’s a winner, so the question is, are you ready to take the leap?
If you want to find out more about how the Microsoft Power Platform for healthcare can help you supercharge your business, get in touch with our team today.
