How to enable team-based care using digital technology?

Team-based care has become a major objective of health care following the industry's shift to value-based care models. With cost-cutting and patient outcomes being goals of many value-based care models, industry experts believe teamwork across different healthcare providers is crucial for success.

The fundamental concept of team-based care is to deliver optimal care outcomes for patients with effective collaborations between individual professionals involved in the process. This includes doctors, nurses, specialists, physician assistants, and other non-clinical professionals who are integral to caring for a patient.

The model helps improve healthcare quality, minimize repetitive testing, and address inconsistencies in care, directly contributing to better patient outcomes.

It has also been recognized as a useful strategy for minimizing physician burnouts, increasing effectiveness and efficiency in teams and individual job satisfaction, and happier and healthier patients.

Despite the fact that the need for integrated, team-based care has been recognized for decades, many health care providers still experience various difficulties implementing such models. Lack of integrated electronic health records, poor communication, poor integration within and between organizational systems are some of the most common issues organizations face that can be solved with a single solution- Digital technology.

Let’s look at how.

Strengthen data flow for high quality connected care

Electronic health records play a crucial role in team-based care, and all care providers nowadays use EHR to store data. However, the outdated system they use lacks interoperability and thus cannot act more than as digital data storage.

Tracing and tracking patient data are challenging with inconsistent structures and data elements, thereby hindering the capability for transferring clinical data between different parties. A good care management suite provides solutions to streamlining data flow between parties while introducing and integrating systems for better accessibility, quality, safety and efficiency– thus resulting in better-connected care.

Facilitate teamwork and collaboration

In team-based care, effective tools and processes for better collaborations are essential. Reducing stay length and improving organizational workflows, especially between different departments, significantly improves team-based care. Digital technology facilitates teamwork and collaboration in many ways, from streamlining workflows and processes to enabling better system accessibility and integration. Moreover, real-time data updates ensure different teams are involved in the process to get instant updates on patients' medical records and can quickly check on status, which allow them to take immediate actions for better patient outcomes.

Better coordination of care between acute and community health

Good team base care operates seamlessly in the field just as it operates in premises. Digital technology offers numerous tools and functions for your staff working hard in the field to coordinate and collaborate with other professionals involved in the process – The result is immediate and effective coordinated community care.  DC2Vue® Provider portal and Patient portal are 2 best examples for this, which deliver exclusive solutions for optimising processes and operations for clinicians and the mobile health care workforce. 

Digital technologies also give professionals the ability to work remotely as per their schedule, boost employee engagement and satisfaction. Remote telehealth, virtual health care, remote team management are few such solutions digital technology delivers that simplify patient care for teams –Which comes in handy than ever before amidst this pandemic for them to connect with their patients and provide better care for better patient outcomes.

Summary

Digital technology can take team-based care of any organization to the next level, improving efficiency in connected care and patient outcomes for the higher patient and professional satisfaction. Technology is essential to create seamless data integration and accessibility among professionals to develop continuous workflows and effective integration between teams and departments – Thus giving a better chance in succeeding at team-based care.

To learn more about our digital solutions for team-based care, get in touch with us today.