Healthcare providers receive data from many disparate sources: hospitals, doctors’ offices, labs and lab machines, medical devices, pharmacies, and more. Investment in the correct infrastructure to organize it all is critical — but too rare.
Structured, codified clinical data systems are essential to help providers deliver better patient care while reducing administrative burden and clinician burnout. It’s not just a technology exercise, but a strategic investment opportunity for healthcare organizations.
Why move data to the cloud?
Moving clinical data management to cloud platforms can carry myriad benefits for healthcare organizations, including lower costs, enhanced security and scalability, clearer clinical stories, and reduced clinician burnout.
Lowered costs – Traditional on-premises systems require substantial investments in server hardware, cooling systems, and maintenance costs. Cloud migration reduces the need for these major capital expenditures in lieu of lighter and more predictable operational expenses. Many health systems also have redundant and outdated software tools that incur costs even though they aren’t used. Cloud platforms can help identify and eliminate these redundancies.
Scalable & secure systems – Cloud technology can automatically scale up storage capacity as clinical data volume expands, reducing or eliminating the need for hardware procurement and lengthy installation periods. It can also reduce the risk of disruptions and care delays. For example, in the wake of an unexpected event, such as a natural disaster, cloud-backed healthcare systems will be better prepared to meet community needs. They can scale as needed to handle varying user loads, from routine clinical workflows to emergency surge capacity. Cloud platforms also benefit from a broader support network. Instead of a single Chief Information Officer or small in-house IT function, they have global teams working around the clock to keep them safe. As cybercriminals continue to target electronic protected health information (ePHI), secure platforms with round-the-clock monitoring are crucial for cyber risk mitigation.
Clearer stories – Storing care-related data in the cloud allows providers to access records from multiple healthcare systems and data sources. Centralizing these records enables a more holistic patient story, which can help clinicians deliver better outcomes. For example, imagine a patient who has registered an elevated blood pressure over a period of five years. On the surface, this may seem like all the information necessary to make a diagnosis. But if a provider can see that the patient’s address has changed four times in that same timeframe, that changes the story, potentially indicating that this individual has situation-based stress from moving so frequently. With the full picture in view, the provider can give more tailored care recommendations.
Patient experience enhancement – Discreet actionable data allows cloud technology to evaluate patient data and assist providers in making care decisions. For example, cloud systems can interpret insurance copay amounts and automate appointment reminders, freeing up administrative staff members to create a more efficient and comfortable environment for patients visiting the office, particularly for those who find it daunting to visit clinicians for care. For the providers themselves, the cloud can interpret codes that signal conditions like hypertension, alerting clinicians to high blood pressure. These codes can help with care intervention even if patients are not completely transparent about how they are feeling during their annual physicals.
Structuring data for value
Alongside its many benefits, healthcare systems must also consider the effort that goes into creating an efficient, codified data system. It requires much more than a simple copy and paste into a spreadsheet. Healthcare systems will need to pull data from multiple sources (EHRs, diagnostic labs, pharmacy records, claims databases), clean and standardize it, and then upload it into unified systems.
Given the complexity, organizations should think critically about the value streams they want to access and how the records in their cloud platforms would feed into them before they choose to move forward with integration. Some of the value streams that providers may choose include:
Clinical information that can automatically address questions from insurance companies without staff intervention
Information that can be presented to a patient or caregiver via an app or portal
Algorithms for care managers that can be used to prioritize which patients to follow up with first
Determining the right use cases for a given organization is critical to making a valuable investment in data management for the cloud. When exploring data infrastructure, healthcare organizations should also consider how they will clean and standardize their data, what skilled personnel will be needed to build and manage the infrastructure, and how they will approach security monitoring.
Building for clinical success
Ultimately, migrating healthcare data to the cloud can support stronger clinical operations and enhanced patient care. The cloud is flexible, less expensive, more secure, easier to manage, and can expand quickly as needs evolve in comparison to on-premises systems. The key to implementation lies in strategically structuring the platform to deliver a holistic view of patient data.
Photo: Natali_Mis, Getty Images
Jim Murray has over 25 years of experience in healthcare technology, leading the creation and implementation of solutions to improve the quality, efficiency, and overall delivery of care. At BDO, Jim serves as Managing Director of the BDO Center for Healthcare Excellence & Innovation which provides a combination of strategy, financial resilience, clinical operations management, and digital transformation services focused on helping provider organizations improve their ability to deliver high quality care, enhance the patient experience, and drive financial improvement.
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