The Newest Healthcare IT Solutions making an Impact on Patient Health

With all of the reports of information breaches swirling around in the news recently, healthcare providers are constantly on the lookout for new threats and vulnerabilities and finding new ways to secure the patient data that they have. This is especially important given that all kinds of regulations govern the healthcare industry, such as HIPPA, The HITECH Act, the chain of custody, and many others. Fortunately, SharePoint can assist hospitals, doctors and clinical service providers in keeping patient data secure and expediting many processes along the way. Let’s take a closer look at the healthcare IT solutions provided by SharePoint.

SharePoint will foster collaboration between your employees with an intranet that will improve overall staff efficiency, increase staff engagement and the quality of patient care. While some of the features listed below might be included out-of-the-box, they can be installed with custom SharePoint development. These features and benefits include:

Until now, we have looked at all of the things that are possible to do with the intranet. However, the extranet offers many functionalities as well and could replace phone calls for communication. Such a unified collaboration space makes all communication between healthcare providers as transparent as possible, which is helpful for companies’ communications. In addition to everything mentioned above, SharePoint offers you:

• A unified knowledge base on the ever-changing needs in medical supplies, allowing suppliers to sharp urgently

• Lightning-faced information sharing between all parties involved to monitor the overall course of treatment if the patient is being treated at multiple facilities

• Display any announcements all participants must be aware of

• Getting Organized

Managing all of your documents has never been so easy and secure. There will be a detailed trail of all the locations of your papers along with streamlining processes such as:

In many health organizations, the IT department is responsible for implementing all of the tools needed to manage the digital assets that are not included in the employee health record. IT department has a love-hate relationship with SharePoint because, on the one hand, it is a convenient solution where all files can be stored, but on the other hand, they have to adopt third-party technology to improve security. Microsoft has streamlined data security and compliance inside SharePoint Online. Therefore IT administrators will be able to find more robust security measures that will be much easier to introduce and manage. Built-in features inside SharePoint (SP) can detect protected health information (PHI) and prevent this information from being uploaded. Also, Information Rights Management will protect confidential patient information with data encryption to ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands.

If you wonder why companies need a solution like Power BI, we must first understand the reporting capabilities that come out-of-the-box with SharePoint. These include:

As you can imagine, the built-in features have many limitations. The data obtained might not be what you need to make fast decisions. The detailed information is not the correct type of detail, and you can not set permission levels and many others. This is where Power BI comes in.

If you have not heard of Power BI, it is a very effective free tool. Companies often use it to make sense of data by visualizing it. It is much easier to use than instruments such as SSRS and posts dashboards and reports online into any group you want with only a few clicks. Even though a Pro version has even wider functionality, you should not need the paid account unless you are working on a very complex report.

If you are wondering how this all looks in practice, consider the following scenario: hospitals and other medical organizations require employees to follow appropriate instructions on utilizing specific tools and performing procedures. A dashboard inside SharePoint can create monitoring of the lectures or modules completed. This will allow you to make sure that employee skills remain relevant, and you will be using your training budget and resources more effectively by focusing them on the people or departments that need them the most.

It would help if you gave Power BI a shot because there is no need to make any financial investments. It will allow you to create customizable and dynamic reports, and if you feel that you need even more functionality, you can opt for the paid version. The user interface is very sleek, and there is no coding or other time-consuming efforts involved in creating reports using the already made visuals or custom-made ones. Since Power Bi integrates into SharePoint or any other data source, the report will be automatically updated to reflect those changes.

Power Bi collects data from lots of different sources, which can be both on-premise or cloud-based services. Power BI will always pull the most recent data thanks to automated refresh. Integrating Power BI into SP.

The most important things you need to measure in SharePoint are how well adoption is going and are your employees engaged. An Office 365 content adoption pack is included inside Power BI, making it very easy to find any information. This consists of the number of new and returning users, giving you knowledge of your ROI in using SharePoint. If people don’t actively use SharePoint, you can conduct surveys to determine why and make the necessary improvements.

Perhaps more importantly, if you need to gain a particular metric or you would like to have a custom toolbar in SharePoint, all of this can be done with Power BI.

As we have seen from everything above, SharePoint has a lot to offer healthcare organizations, but, like all technology, it comes with its limitations, and it is vital to know them. First of all, you need to be on the lookout for security gaps. This could be something like misusing or circumventing access permissions in Sharepoint, which can lead to HIPPA violations. Also, SharePoint training is necessary, even if you implement only out-of-the-box functionalities. You will need to teach your colleagues all of the functions and capabilities because not everybody can understand the reason for implementing SP. One of the top complaints about SharePoint is that it was implemented because the C-suite insisted on it, and everybody else hates it.

To avoid this situation, it is a good idea to explain why SharePoint is being implemented and how it will help streamline processes and utilize the full functionality. Usually, a revolt happens when organizations try to implement a one-size-fits-all approach. If this happens, you need to integrate third-party software to make SP more efficient. SharePoint can be customized to fit your individual needs, but it does take time to do so.

There are tons of capabilities that SharePoint can offer for healthcare organizations. It streamlines all kinds of processes that enable them to perform their job better. While it is possible to customize SharePoint, it is essential to remember that it might require additional software integration to see specific data and reports. Power BI is the best tool because you can use it to display any metric and create any toolbar you need. Power Bi is a complete game-changer in this regard.

Remember, there is no point in spending much money on SharePoint if employee usage is shallow. In addition to educating employees about SharePoint, you will need to show them that this can make their daily tasks much more manageable and eliminate many time-consuming processes. The data that Power BI offers is critical to evaluate whether or not you are getting the right ROI from your SharePoint investment.

As far as compliance with healthcare regulations is concerned, SharePoint can reduce or eliminate a lot of the risk associated with transferring patient data both inside and outside the organization. The best part is that SharePoint leaves a paper trail of all the places where patient information was sent and who accessed the information. This will make it much easier to determine who leaked any information in the event of a legal dispute. However, one of the biggest reasons companies use SharePoint for healthcare is that it reduces such risks in the first place. This is one of SharePoint’s most significant advantages over cloud services such as Google Docs or any other cloud storage.

You will finally be able to eliminate all of the lost time searching for information. Everything will be organized and can be accessed by only the people who have permission. By keeping everything in one place, you do not have to remember where each item is located. Even if you can not find something right away, convenient search functions support a full-text search. Imagine how difficult it is to manage the health record of a patient who gets treated at multiple locations. This file has to be transferred from one place to another without any data being lost or compromised. Furthermore, if each organization uses its storage or collaboration system, it could further inhibit collaboration.

With Sharepoint, you know exactly where everything is, and if you need another healthcare provider to submit certain information or sign a form, there is no need to turn back to other healthcare IT solutions. The provider will be able to do this right in SharePoint. This saves a lot of time and hassle, which ultimately leads to more satisfied employees and patients. Sharepoint enables your employees to be happy, which, in turn, will allow them to serve patients better.

When you are first implementing SharePoint for healthcare, be sure to plan out exactly how the entire process will go and consult with a third-party provider if necessary. They might also be able to help you with training to ensure wider adoption and get your efforts off to a good start. The initial planning and implementation processes are critical to the overall success of an adoption. Employees need to see that all of their needs have been accounted for, and they need to understand that it will simplify their lives to a great degree.