4 Best Practices for DPA in Healthcare with Salesforce

The healthcare industry is quick to adopt the technologies that will make work better, easier, and more efficient, at least from an operational perspective.

As the patient experience and patient engagement have taken center stage, that affinity for technology has been extended to the touchpoints that directly and indirectly impact patients.

Of course, one of the biggest challenges in technology for healthcare has been that expansive amount of technology solutions. Salesforce has been able to bring those disparate pieces together with Health Cloud, enhancing the view of the patient and improving the value of patient communication.

Salesforce also brings together two main drives for tech adoption in healthcare - streamlined operations and elevated patient experiences. The platform provides digital process automation (DPA) tools that automate processes and workflows to create a better user experience.

These tools shouldn’t be adopted randomly and without thought, however. For optimal platform usage, healthcare providers should plan carefully, using best practices to implement DPA across the organization.

Best Practices for Healthcare Use of Salesforce and DPA

Design and Document Workflows by Team

Workflows are very different depending on the role of the staff working with the patient. Notably, the information needed by each role varies as well.

Health Cloud’s powerful role-based system not only supports the security aspects of patient data and access but opens the door to the development of customized workflows and, within those, automated actions.

For instance, the steps that front office staff must complete to update insurance information may be vastly different from what billing staff needs to do to ensure the right payers are invoiced. The right elements can be included in the flow for those specific roles by documenting these workflows individually. Once established, it’s easier to see where automation that can improve the patient experience might be implemented, such as automated cross-system updates that ensure data flows from patient data to billing without errors.

Combine Actions for Updates in Patient Portals

Self-service patient portals have simplified communication and data management for both the patient and support staff. It’s not uncommon, however, for a patient to have several updates at a time, such as a new address, plus a new job, plus new insurance.

This can be frustrating for patients if forms aren’t well designed and cause providers to run up against Salesforce action limits. To reduce complexity while also minimizing the number of actions per object, consider prompting patients for information that is commonly updated at the same time.

For instance, if a patient enters the portal to update their insurance information, the form could also prompt them to also make updates to address, phone, and job information. That data could be batched together at once and sent as a single update action instead of being 3 or 4 different data updates.

Leverage Automation for Communication Tools

Clear and timely communication are proven ways to enhance the patient experience and to increase engagement. However, managing that communication can be time-consuming for providers and support staff, and manual management of that communication can result in missed calls and updates - in other words, missed opportunities to engage with the patient.

This automation can extend well beyond the standard appointment reminders. For example, patients can indicate their preferred communication method - phone, email, text, and so forth - and targeted and personalized information can be automatically provided through that method of communication. This includes sending educational materials relating to health goals or conditions or automated reminders if patients miss an action laid out as part of their Health Cloud-designed care plan.

Use Scheduled Actions to Update External Systems

One of the most powerful features of Salesforce is that it isn’t an EMR or other healthcare system but instead can integrate and talk to systems across a provider’s ecosystem and network.

Updating that information can be cumbersome and even costly without proper planning. Even without Salesforce action limits, updating external systems can get messy, resulting in data integrity issues and potential problems for patients and even their care. When data is updated, deleted, or created in Salesforce, processes should first complete the transaction within Salesforce. A scheduled transaction that updates the external system should be added at the end of the internal Salesforce action to ensure data synchronization.

Conclusion

Salesforce Health Cloud offers a flexible, dynamic, and powerful system to bring together your legacy systems while automating flows and information updates so that providers and support staff can get back to caring for patients. Following a few best practices when automating your digital processes ensures that the systems will scale and flex along with your organization.

If you’re wondering how Salesforce can help you provide better patient outcomes, improved experiences, and streamlined operations, contact us at Six Consulting. Our experts have extensive experience with the multiple facets of Salesforce, from Health Cloud implementations and integrations to the set up of communication flows, process automation, and custom apps.