IT giant Salesforce today is introducing new capabilities for its popular Salesforce Health Cloud, including Provider Relationship Management and Einstein Analytics for Healthcare. The aim of these two capabilities is to provide a more comprehensive platform for payers and providers.

Also available today is Destinations, a no-code healthcare-interoperability Salesforce AppExchange system built by ISV partner Bridge Connector, which enables organizations to quickly and easily integrate disparate healthcare applications with Health Cloud.

WHY IT MATTERS
The new Provider Relationship Management capabilities in Health Cloud are designed to help healthcare organizations connect consumers to the right care faster, efficiently manage provider networks and grow quality relationships, said Dr. Ashwini Zenooz, Chief Medical Officer and general manager for healthcare and life sciences, at Salesforce.

New features include provider search. Payers and providers need to steer their healthcare consumers to the best care possible to maximize scheduling and drive a better experience. Provider search is a critical part of any healthcare organizations’ ability to connect individuals to the right care provider, Zenooz said.

“New Provider Search in Health Cloud makes it easy to match patients and members with the right care provider faster,” she explained. “Service reps can find providers on behalf of a patient or member, and it can also be extended to consumers themselves via self-service. Provider search can be done using specific criteria, including location, availability, specialty and whether they are accepting new patients.”

Fields can be customized by each organization to further enhance the search experience. For example, a payer can add cost level as a custom field to the search criteria, so allowing patients to be better informed about their estimated out-of-pocket cost before they select or meet with a provider.

Salesforce’s second announcement is Einstein Analytics for Healthcare, an out-of-the-box analytics system that is designed to give payers and providers greater visibility into patients’ care to improve health outcomes.

“In compliance with industry regulations, Einstein Analytics for Healthcare is built specifically for Health Cloud, and allows care coordinators, referral managers and other roles to get up and running quickly with pre-built dashboards and industry KPIs like length of referral time or care-plan adherence right in the platform,” Zenooz said. “Users can segment patients by risk and other attributes to ensure they are reaching the right patient at the right time, as well as identify potential barriers to health in order to reduce readmissions or avoidable claims.”

Tableau’s easy-to-use visual analytics platform delivers insights organization-wide, even for users who do not work within Health Cloud, enabling every part of a healthcare organization to take a data-driven approach to operational efficiency and patient care, she added.

“By connecting Tableau dashboards to critical data sources within the hospital system, including leading electronic medical records and billing programs, everyone from administrators to clinicians are able to analyze the data most relevant to their role and make decisions to improve their output,” she explained. “For example, a team of researchers can analyze a combination of patient data and historical genomic data to accelerate and improve patient outcomes, or a hospital system can review surgical data to identify unnecessary operations to curb wasteful spending and save patients money.”

Salesforce’s third announcement today is Destinations, Bridge Connector’s no-code healthcare interoperability technology, available on the Salesforce AppExchange. It is designed to enable healthcare organizations to accelerate the interoperability of Health Cloud and enable Salesforce admins to easily integrate EHR data with predefined data mappings without having to write a line of code.

Destinations is now also available in Anypoint Exchange as an API spec, empowering MuleSoft healthcare customers to orchestrate patient data across Salesforce and third-party systems with API-led connectivity.

THE LARGER TREND
Major healthcare organizations continue to leverage the power of Salesforce’s platform to get closer to their members and patients, Zenooz said.

“Piedmont Healthcare integrates Health Cloud with Marketing Cloud to modernize its approach to marketing in ways that are more data-driven and transparent,” she noted. “As a result, Piedmont has launched a customized, enterprise-wide digital framework that now touches every part of the organization and focuses on three key outcomes: patient personalization, improved provider-referral and outreach management, and increased operational efficiency.”

Cancer Treatment Centers of America relies on Health Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Communities to help patients and caregivers navigate the complexities of a cancer diagnosis, she continued.

“These platforms help Cancer Treatment Centers of America digitize and provide transparency around the journey from diagnosis to survivorship by providing patients with timely information, connecting them to other patients and specialists, and ultimately empowering them to make informed decisions about their care,” she said.

ON THE RECORD
“Our vision for Salesforce’s Customer 360 for Healthcare is to empower healthcare and life-sciences organizations of all types and sizes to deliver more personalized and collaborative experiences at scale,” Zenooz said. “That’s why we’re excited to announce new industry-specific innovations for healthcare built on Salesforce.”

The goal, she concluded, is to work toward improving health outcomes and unlocking operational efficiencies by connecting people, data and processes on a unified platform.

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.