How to Get the Most Out of Your Enterprise Health Cloud

“Cloud-based data insights and digital experience creation will dictate which healthcare firms will thrive.” – Forrester Wave Report

If you're a healthcare CIO looking to implement patient-centric solutions, you likely know that means starting with a great digital experience.

You’re not alone. Recent market data underscores just how important a patient-centric approach has become; interventional medical care is not sufficient to improve the health of populations, a key component of the Triple Aim.

You also know that new payment models in healthcare are driving outcomes-based contracting, making it vitally important to engage with the community of patients, caregivers and doctors to impact social determinants of health. Bending the cost curve will not come from healthcare organizations alone, the patient must be engaged through medication adherence, following medical advice, and pursuing healthy lifestyle changes.

That means you're on the hook for achieving both health outcomes and business objectives. So what are the steps necessary for success?

Focus on business processes and outcomes

Today, smart CIOs are looking to enterprise health clouds, or EHCs, to deliver the digital health experiences patients now expect, while ensuring the necessary data integration and compliance that care providers require.

But simply choosing a health cloud is not enough. It takes careful planning on the front end to make sure your investment is a success. First, it’s important to establish what challenges your organization needs to solve and what objectives you want to achieve. Those could include tracking and reducing emergency room visits, more population health focused metrics or internal improvements, like increased productivity.

After understanding what you need to achieve, the next step is to document and understand current processes. As part of that documentation, consider whether or not each process is still relevant and achieves the desired outcome. For those that are not, how can a move to a health cloud improve them?

This may seem obvious, but it’s critical that every department or team with a stake in the new cloud be involved in analyzing those business processes. This not only ensures that the correct processes are in place, but also gives everyone a clear understanding of why moving to an enterprise health cloud is needed.

The great news is, you don’t have to create the perfect health cloud from scratch.

Salesforce, the global leader in customer relationship management, has leveraged its expertise to create Salesforce Health Cloud, which provides patient-centric insights and deliver unique experiences to engage with patients, caregivers and doctors. With HIPAA-compliant Einstein Analytics, Salesforce Health Cloud gives organizations a 360-degree view of their patients’ health status and history.

Leverage pre-built applications and industry expertise

One key advantage of Salesforce Health Cloud is its AppExchange program, which gives organizations access to thousands of prebuilt applications and microservices, extending Salesforce’s out-of-the-box capabilities. Organizations can implement faster and more cost effectively by leveraging already developed technology from prescreened partners. The Healthcare & Life Sciences AppExchange has more than 100 prebuilt industry specific applications — a number that will grow as Salesforce continues to invest in our Health Cloud.

Don’t just take our word for it. Last year, KLAS Research named Salesforce a category leader for CRM in Healthcare, while our AppExchange beat out competitors in Forrester’s New Wave SaaS Marketplace report due to its scale, breadth and innovation.

Continuously evolve and optimize

In today’s fast-paced technology environment, it’s now critical that organizations continually evolve and optimize their platform to meet changing business requirements: another area where Salesforce Health Cloud shines. One of the platform’s most powerful features is the volume of data that it gathers and analyzes. You’ll have access to in-depth reports, charts and dashboards, providing new patient insights and the ability to make data-driven decisions that improve patient outcomes.

The Rackspace advantage

As a Salesforce Platinum Partner, Rackspace helps guide healthcare companies through their technology modernization journey to become more patient-centric while achieving business outcomes. The company does this through our “Process First. Technology Second.®” approach.

Healthcare organizations of all sizes have depended on Rackspace for the past 20 years, to securely host applications, data and provide the networks to help deliver digital transformation, increased patient engagement, actionable analytics and rationalizing data centers. Rackspace already serves more than 2,500 customers dedicated to the healthcare community and is recognized by Gartner as a HIPAA-ready cloud service provider.

[Read more: HIMSS Sponsorship Deepens Rackspace Commitment to Healthcare Industry]

Visit us at HIMSS19

Join us Feb. 11-15 in Orlando, Florida for HIMSS19, the premier healthcare technology conference, where leaders in healthcare and technology connect to solve the industry’s most pressing challenges. We’ll be at booth 7764 in the Exhibit Hall. Schedule a meeting with one of our Salesforce Health Cloud implementation experts to see how this powerful solution can enhance your patient engagement and start increasing your business efficiencies.

Can’t make HIMSS this year, but want to learn more? Follow @rackspace on Twitter for conference insights and updates from our healthcare leaders, or visit our healthcare pages.