Breaking Down Silos: How Care Coordination Improves Health Services

Patient-centered care requires the thoughtful coordination of services and providers. From the initial contact with a family doctor or emergency room team to discharge, numerous parties are involved in the care of a single patient. Coordinating these care providers is an essential aspect of interoperability in healthcare, and when coordination fails, patient outcomes are worsened.

One of the most significant challenges in care coordination in healthcare is siloed information. Silos occur when data held in one system is inaccessible by another, which can lead to delays in treatment. Breaking down these silos is a primary key to improving health services and accelerating positive patient outcomes. 

Impact of Siloed Systems on Healthcare Delivery

Even with just a single primary diagnosis, a patient may see multiple medical professionals and specialists. A person with kidney problems, for example, might see their family doctor, a nephrologist, a pharmacist, a nutrition specialist, and other health care providers throughout their treatment. If any of these professionals can’t access the relevant patient information due to silos, that patient could experience delays and worsened health outcomes.

For healthcare organizations, the financial implications could be severe. A loss of reputation can be damaging financially, and long treatment delays mean longer waits for payments and stunted cash flow. Where healthcare practices are reimbursed on a value-based care basis, better patient outcomes are critical. 

Yet service providers are not always able to communicate and collaborate effectively. A recent review of relevant literature found five recurring themes impacting effective care coordination: 

1. Managing a patient’s care across multiple systems

2. Coordinating between primary and secondary care transitions

3. Collaboration between professionals and various healthcare sectors

4. Health information exchange and interoperability

5. Case management approaches

Frequent barriers included technological limitations and fragmented services. The systems that weren’t connected in meaningful ways created data silos and bottlenecks.

Benefits of Integrated Care Coordination

In healthcare, integration of data into easily accessible systems is essential for increasing the likelihood of positive patient outcomes. Healthcare data management can be challenging, however, due to necessary privacy constraints. But with the right partners and vendors in place, it’s possible to combine security with interoperability.

When healthcare facilities focus on integrating interoperability, coordination of care becomes simpler and can result in:

• Improved patient outcomes and satisfaction

• Operational efficiencies and cost reductions

• Enhanced data sharing and decision-making processes

Chief financial officers (CFOs) should take note that all these benefits also lead to increased profits.

Role of C-Suite Executives in Facilitating Care Coordination

How can chief information and technology officers (CIOs and CTOs) lead the integration of care coordination technologies? One CIO of a nephrology care provider noted, “When it comes to chronic disease management, technology should enable consistent communication and data sharing between all stakeholders in a patient’s care.” The tech leader went on to state that electronic healthcare record (EHR) systems should support accurate, accessible data as soon as it’s required. 

When the voice of reason comes from the C-suite, it can adjust organizational culture and encourage new, more collaborative ways of working. Healthcare leadership strategies should include examining which technologies are available to accelerate data accessibility and break down silos, without compromising patient data security. 

Technological Solutions for Effective Care Coordination

Many executives are improving care coordination in healthcare by shifting toward vendors such as NextGen, which offer intuitive, accessible, secure EHR and electronic practice management (EPM) systems. These systems can often access data from multiple locations but display it in a unified dashboard, streamlining workflows and helping patients quickly get the support they need. 

An aging healthcare IT infrastructure often includes multiple legacy systems that cannot be upgraded, which instantly creates frustrating silos. Shifting to entirely new systems and tools might seem daunting and expensive in the short term, but the long-term benefits outweigh the immediate challenges. 

In the U.K., the National Health Service (NHS) is currently exploring population health management (PHM), which examines the causes of major health problems across the population and how to tackle them. Technology is a key factor for successful PHM, for integrating care systems, improving care coordination, and breaking down silos. The NHS notes that services must move from “competition to collaboration” to offer improved health services for all. 

How TempDev Can Help You Improve Care Coordination

While your executive team works on adjusting your organizational culture to one of collaboration, you can seek expert help to ensure your EHR systems are also communicative and collaborative. TempDev works with numerous healthcare organizations to help them get the most out of their NextGen tools. We offer clinical workflow optimization, templates, and intuitive dashboards that deliver the data you need, exactly when you need it, to improve patient outcomes.

Research shows that focusing on effective care coordination reduces the risk of readmission while significantly cutting costs. Contact us online to find out more or call 1888.TEMPDEV.