As hospitals and health systems embrace digital transformation in earnest, they're apt to find improvements on any number of fronts, from staffing challenges (especially in acute care nursing), length of stay, 30-day readmissions, value-based care and chronic care management.

Dr. Nick Patel is physician executive partner at Pivot Point Consulting. (It was ranked no. 1 Best in KLAS for Managed Services and Technical Services in 2024). He has significant hands-on experience with digital transformation, having practiced medicine for 20 years and served in various executive roles – he was the inaugural chief digital officer at Prisma Health and vice chair of primary care in the department of medicine in South Carolina – until he decided to bring his clinical and digital transformation experience to management consulting in 2022.

Patel now works with global and U.S.-based healthcare organizations integrating clinical, consumer and operational needs with a digital-forward strategy. We spoke with him about the various benefits he sees of digital transformation.

Q. How can digital transformation address the healthcare pain point of staffing challenges, especially in acute care nursing?

A. A clearly defined digital transformation strategy offers health systems new tools to address critical staffing challenges, especially in acute care nursing, where high patient demand and burnout rates frequently lead to workforce shortages.

Predictive analytics and automated scheduling systems are particularly impactful, as they enable administrators to forecast staffing needs and proactively adjust schedules based on anticipated patient volumes. Automated scheduling allows nurses to manage shifts through mobile platforms, reducing last-minute schedule changes and minimizing human errors in staffing.

This not only enhances staffing efficiency but also improves nurse work-life balance, which can significantly reduce burnout and turnover in high-stress acute care environments. In addition, digital tools such as wearable patient monitoring platforms and telehealth can alleviate some of the workload on acute care nurses.

By remotely tracking patients' vitals and other health metrics, nurses can monitor stable patients without the need for continuous in-person assessments. This helps them focus on higher-priority, critically ill patients within the acute care unit.

Once more, applying AI and automation tools to continuous monitoring allows for appropriate escalation to providers and early detection of deterioration. Telehealth systems can also help manage patient flow by enabling certain tasks such as admission and discharge intakes to be conducted by virtual providers.

As well, transitional care visits can happen virtually post-discharge using telehealth platforms and external staffing to alleviate long wait times due to primary care provider shortages. These technologies help redistribute patient load and optimize nursing and primary care resources, reducing pressure on both acute and ambulatory care staff.

Finally, digital technologies can facilitate more effective communication and training for healthcare staff. Centralized communication platforms allow real-time, secure messaging between nurses, physicians and support staff, streamlining patient care coordination and reducing administrative overhead.

Additionally, virtual training tools, like next-generation sim labs that include VR simulations and online modules, help accelerate onboarding and upskilling for nurses, ensuring they are well-prepared for the demands of acute care. These training resources not only improve job confidence but also support retention by fostering continuous professional development.

Collectively, all these digital systems create a more responsive, well-supported healthcare workforce that can adapt to shifting demands and contribute to a more sustainable and resilient health system.

Q. How can digital transformation help reduce length of stay?

A. Digital technologies can significantly reduce patient length of stay by enhancing early diagnosis, streamlining treatment plans and improving overall efficiency in patient care. Advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence tools can rapidly analyze patient data, flagging critical health patterns and assisting clinicians in diagnosing conditions faster and more accurately.

Early detection allows for quicker treatment initiation, which can prevent complications and shorten recovery times. Additionally, electronic health records facilitate seamless communication among healthcare providers, reducing delays in treatment transitions and minimizing bottlenecks in the flow of patient care. By ensuring timely and coordinated care, hospitals can move patients through the care process more efficiently, ultimately reducing their length of stay.

Smart hospital rooms and automation play a key role in lowering the length of stay, as they allow for continued monitoring and care outside the hospital setting. Patients with manageable conditions can be safely discharged earlier while still receiving high-quality care and regular check-ins through telehealth platforms at home.

The use of data analytics to predict risk scores can help activate other team members such as pharmacists, and care coordinators to ensure timely Diagnosis Related Group-based discharge.

Risk scores can also help with load balancing providers. Remote patient monitoring devices enable clinicians to monitor vital signs remotely, ensuring that any potential health issues post-discharge are detected and managed promptly without the need for re-hospitalization. This approach not only enhances patient outcomes but also frees up hospital resources, reducing the overall patient load and allowing hospitals to maintain a more efficient flow of admissions and discharges.

Q. How can digital transformation lower 30-day readmissions?

A. The appropriate use of technology can lower 30-day readmission rates by improving post-discharge care and enhancing remote patient monitoring to catch potential issues early. This also enables proper transitional care to ensure patients are on the right path to recovery. RPM allows healthcare providers to track vital signs and other health indicators in real time for recently discharged patients.

Through wearable devices or home monitoring systems, clinicians can keep tabs on patients' conditions, identify signs of complications and intervene before issues necessitate re-hospitalization. This proactive approach, combined with in-person follow-up appointments, ensures patients receive timely support and care adjustments as they recover at home, reducing the likelihood of preventable readmissions.

Additionally, digital tools like predictive analytics and AI-driven risk assessments help healthcare providers identify patients at high risk of readmission and create targeted care plans to mitigate this risk. By analyzing EHR data and social determinants of health, these tools can flag patients who might face challenges in adhering to their treatment plans due to factors such as limited access to resources, medication adherence issues or other health conditions.

With this insight, providers can customize discharge instructions, connect patients with their PCP and needed community resources, and set up additional support, such as frequent check-ins or virtual consultations, tailored to each patient's needs. This level of personalized, data-driven post-discharge care has a significant impact on reducing 30-day readmissions, improving patient outcomes and optimizing healthcare resources.

Q. How can digital transformation assist with value-based care?

A. Digital transformation is essential to advancing value-based care by providing tools that focus on improving patient outcomes while reducing costs. Data analytics and machine learning algorithms enable healthcare providers to identify trends, risk factors and patterns across large patient populations, which helps in delivering more effective, targeted treatments.

By integrating data from EHRs, healthcare information exchanges, wearables and patient-reported outcomes, digital platforms create a comprehensive view of each patient's health, allowing for more personalized care plans. These insights drive proactive care strategies, ensuring patients receive timely interventions and preventive measures that help avoid costly complications, hospital readmissions and emergency visits – key goals of value-based care.

These tools also help with chronic care management and care gap closures by using chatbots and AI agents to navigate care.

Moreover, digital health tools like telehealth, RPM and patient engagement platforms empower patients to take an active role in managing their health, which is a cornerstone of value-based care. By facilitating continuous communication between patients and providers, these technologies make it easier to track progress, adjust treatments and provide educational resources that promote long-term wellness.

For example, RPM allows healthcare teams to detect potential health issues early, enabling timely interventions that prevent exacerbations and reduce the need for higher-cost intensive care. This patient-centered, technology-driven approach not only enhances clinical outcomes but also aligns with the principles of value-based care by emphasizing quality and efficiency over volume, leading to more sustainable healthcare costs, better outcomes and improved patient satisfaction.

Q. How can digital transformation help with the pain point of chronic care management?

A. Digital tools that combine chatbots, AI agents and wearables on a singular platform can activate multiple clinical use cases such as chronic care management by enabling continuous, data-driven monitoring and personalized care for patients with long-term health conditions.

Next generation ambient RPM devices allow healthcare providers to track critical health metrics, such as blood pressure, glucose levels and heart rate, in real time, with minimal effort by the patient. For example, continuous glucose monitoring devices allow for near real-time monitoring of glucose without the need of finger sticks.

This data then flows to a secure cloud which is tied to a provider-configured escalation algorithm that alerts providers when readings are out of range. This ongoing monitoring ensures potential issues are detected early, enabling timely interventions before they escalate into more serious health events that require hospital visits. EHRs must provide the robust APIs to support proper bidirectional data flow to support chronic care management.

This thereby ensures centralization of patient data, giving providers a holistic view of a patient's history, treatments and progress over time, which is essential for making well-informed care decisions.

Digital tools also foster stronger patient engagement, which is critical for effectively managing chronic conditions. Mobile health apps, telehealth consultations and personalized digital care plans empower patients to take an active role in their own health, providing them with reminders, educational content and direct access to their healthcare team.

This comprehensive engagement helps improve adherence to medication regimens, lifestyle recommendations and follow-up appointments, all of which are vital for managing chronic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. By streamlining communication and enabling more consistent monitoring, use case-based digital transformation helps reduce hospitalizations, improve patient outcomes, and ultimately make chronic care management more efficient and patient-centered.

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