I.T. is an essential tool for making your healthcare business thrive. But how can you benefit from I.T. to the maximum? What does the best I.T. look like at a successful healthcare practice?
Whether your healthcare business is a medical office, a practice, a lab, or something else; whether that business is just about to begin, or you need to upgrade to a higher level, healthcare I.T. is all about helping you to:
So, What Does Great I.T. Look Like at a Healthcare Business?
Information technology is at its greatest when every component of your healthcare business is coordinated, consistent, and working seamlessly to help you achieve your goals.
1. A Modern Marketing Strategy
One main goal of implementing I.T. in healthcare businesses is to attract prospective patients, boosting your earnings. With the right implementation of data, your business can target the more than 72% of Americans who tend to search online for healthcare services prior to scheduling an appointment.
Making the most of data coupled with modern digital marketing strategies, you can compete more successfully, provide the services that most interest your patients, decrease wait times, and increase the satisfaction rate of your customers.
Strategies to maximize your digital outreach include:
- A website that attracts prospective patients and converts them into actual patients. That website should be optimized for local searches, enabling you to reach new patients in the areas surrounding your business.
- Social media to reach your patients where they gather. More and more, people search for information via social media websites and applications. In truth, it’s no longer “optional” to have a Facebook page for your business. You can also reach members of your audience with targeted social media ads.
- Engaging content. Publishing content that informs and educates your patients is a great way to increase your website’s SEO and build trust—as well as answer frequently asked questions.
- Show off your great reputation. People want social proof. Having a presence on platforms and websites where patients can leave ratings and feedback is vital to attracting prospective patients.
- Communicate with your patients electronically.
- Save time and increase patient satisfaction and loyalty by using email and automated text messages to share lab results, reminders, and encouragement.
2. Medical Office Technology
I.T. at its greatest means that you can use the best medical office technologies that will save the time of your doctors and employees, enabling them to do more in less time, ultimately improving the quality of the service provided.
You can automate the majority of the repetitive tasks required to run your office, such as:
cancel an appointment.
3. Artificial Intelligence Technology
Over the next decade, healthcare I.T. at its greatest will undoubtedly come to include using artificial intelligence for purposes such as:
doctors to detect any incompatibilities.
4. Data
Proper data analysis can help you to identify what types of additional services patients are looking for, how to reach new demographics and markets, and how best to serve patients effectively while reducing your own costs.
- Understand the outcomes patients are looking forward to achieving so you can set proper goals during care.
- Check patient medical records against worldwide databases, giving you the chance to identify the ones at a high risk of a certain problem or side effect.
- Alert both your staff and patients with regards to a risk likely to occur, showing them the appropriate precautions to take during care.
5. On-Demand Healthcare
Serve your patients the way they prefer, wherever they happen to be when they need your services—and whenever needed. With video conferencing, you can now provide many of your services through the internet or via a mobile application—or even an “old fashioned” phone call.
Of course, the aforementioned FAQ section on your website, email and text communication, and A.I.-powered chatbots can also help you deliver a wider range of services without increasing clinic hours.
Telemedicine can also allow you to expand your practice, offering patient care to remote and rural populations. You can hire part-time, locum tenens physicians to fulfill on-demand roles, or even provide freelance services yourself.
Studies even show that many patients now prefer on-demand healthcare to scheduled office appointments.
6. Virtual Reality Technology
I.T. at its greatest means that you not only cure your patients but also make them happy, let them enjoy the time they spend at your facility, and increase the success rate of your treatment plans as much as possible. That is what virtual reality (VR) technology can do. For example:
- VR has been shown to help with pain relief.
- Rehabilitation exercises can be guided through VR—and gamified to increase the odds that patients will truly follow through with treatment.
- Patients with mental and psychological disorders, such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and more have shown improvement with VR-based treatments.
- Training your employees in safe, stable, inexpensive environments.
7. Wearable Medical Devices
Wearable medical devices enable your healthcare professionals to build strong relationships with your patients and gain their confidence, all while monitoring their health status on a daily basis, without requiring continual visits to your office. In some cases, newer devices are also reducing the need for invasive procedures to check vital statistics.
And of course, the upshot is that having all of this information at your disposal on an ongoing basis will enable you to make proper adjustments to your treatment plans.
8. Cybersecurity
As I.T. technology permeates every part of your business, it becomes your responsibility to protect the privacy of your business entirely, through fully encrypting patient information, keeping their records safe and secured, and ensuring that records are shared securely with other networks and devices.
Plain and simple, cybersecurity at its greatest at healthcare businesses must comply with HIPAA.
9. Blockchain
Blockchain is fast becoming a go-to technology for safely and securely storing EHR, and for securely sharing those records with other networks through a P-2-P technique.
10. 5G Mobile Technology
When it comes to your network, which is the fundamental underpinning of all these above-mentioned technologies, connection speed means a lot. As businesses begin to switch over to 5G, expect to see notable returns in connection speeds, stability, and security.
Furthermore, 5G technology will make it even easier for you to provide your services effectively to remote areas, through enhancing the quality of video conferencing (better image quality, reduced lag, connection stability, lowered interference, and more) which will dramatically improve the patient’s experience as well as improve your ability to diagnose from afar.
Conclusion
Great information technology at healthcare businesses means a lot of things working together, so that your business runs seamlessly and successfully, saving costs, and increasing your ROI.
To learn more about how to maximize your benefits from I.T., contact us today by calling 844-44-JMARK, or via email at [email protected], or via the contact us page of this website.
JMARK has been helping healthcare companies achieve greater success for more than thirty years. We have offices in Springfield, MO; Tulsa, OK; and Fayetteville, AR, and clients throughout the country.
