CRM and the Future of Healthcare Engagement

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CRM and the Future of Healthcare EngagementAs a growing number of healthcare organizations are discovering, the most common technology in healthcare—the electronic medical record (EMR)—isn’t able to meet the demands of patients and providers in today’s value-based healthcare environment. EMRs are highly effective at documenting care, but less so at engaging patients in their own healthcare and improving outcomes across populations.

Fortunately, healthcare organizations can turn to another solution to achieve those objectives: customer relationship management (CRM) software. A CRM solution such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM complements an organization’s EMR system, giving patients the tools to manage and coordinate their care in partnership with their doctor and other providers. At the same time, CRM solutions bring us closer to realizing the Triple Aim of healthcare—better care experiences for individuals, improved population health, and lower costs.

This e-book looks at how CRM solutions are used in healthcare today, and how CRM is poised to transform healthcare engagement and outcomes in the years ahead.

The role of CRM in healthcare todayWhile CRM started as a tool for salespeople, CRM solutions now play a vital role in healthcare as well. To understand the future of CRM in healthcare, it’s important to understand how CRM solutions are being applied today.

Here are some common uses:

Physician referrals Healthcare organizations use CRM to manage the physician referral process, including generating referral paperwork, scheduling, tracking referrals, recording communications, automating appointments, reminders and follow-up, and related analytics and reporting. CRM also simplifies referral management by automating workflows, streamlining what is still often a manual process.

Targeted marketing Using the patient information in their CRM solution, healthcare organizations can reach out to select groups with timely and relevant treatment, educational, or promotional offers designed to improve patients’ health.

The role of CRM in healthcare todayPhysician referrals Healthcare organizations use CRM to manage the physician referral process, including generating referral paperwork,

Health payer communicationsInsurance companies use CRM solutions to send out periodic, targeted announcements to their members. CRM solutions help insurers find new members as well. For example, an insurer using a CRM solution could contact people who requested information about specific plans after comparing costs on a health insurance exchange website.

At the same time, CRM gives payers an opportunity to proactively engage patients on wellness services such as smoking cessation, weight loss management, and medication adherence.

Patient engagement in the pharmaceutical industryIn the pharmaceutical industry, CRM solutions are often used to remind patients to refill prescriptions, or for patient education.

Medical device-industry outreach Medical device makers also use their CRM solution for patient and provider education, but in several other ways as well. With CRM tools, for example, sales reps are better able to manage surgery coverage. This in turn affects multiple operations at the device company, including billing, fulfillment, and customer service. Moreover, device makers use CRM solutions to report items of interest to the sales team—for example, a device that isn’t working properly, or has missing parts. In addition, sales reps rely on CRM to communicate and schedule meetings with surgeons.

The future of CRM in healthcareHealthcare is evolving rapidly from a fee-for-service model to a value-based paradigm focused on outcomes. To improve outcomes, providers are looking to offer care that encompasses all aspects of a patient’s health and well-being. The typical EMR, while effective at recording specific medical information, simply isn’t designed for the kind of long-term patient and provider engagement that forms the foundation of value-based care.

The CRM tools of the future will help bridge this gap. For example, CRM solutions will give providers a more complete understanding of a patient’s overall health status. Enhancing existing patient portals, CRM solutions will facilitate better, more interactive engagement between patients and providers. CRM solutions will support the growth of telemedicine and other types of virtual health. Care that used to be scattered among different providers will be coordinated and tracked via the single platform of the CRM. And at a broader level, providers will use CRM’s advanced analytics capabilities to identify health trends affecting entire populations.

CRM is a key component of healthcare delivery today. Let’s look at how CRM will shape the delivery and experience of healthcare in the future.

360-degree view of patients’ healthCRM solutions give providers a comprehensive, 360-degree look at their patients’ health and medical history. This holistic view includes patient information consolidated from a mix of other systems. It also captures a record of patients’ interactions with providers across the care spectrum.

With a 360-degree perspective, care team members can respond more quickly to a patient’s individual needs. Moreover, having a patient’s complete health information on one platform helps providers coordinate their care and reduce duplicate efforts.

Advanced analyticsCRM solutions are designed to hold vast amounts of data. Physicians and researchers running advanced analytics programs can use this data to make important medical discoveries, which may translate into better treatment options. At the same time, analytics can help healthcare organizations further their business objectives.

Here are some examples of how analytics can serve both healthcare and business purposes:

Personalized care Insights drawn from data can make medical treatments more effective. For example, imagine that a cancer study, using information taken from anonymized CRMs, tracks how patients respond to different types of drugs. Using this research, doctors could personalize care to fit each patient’s unique health situation.

Population health Large data sets—so-called big data—can tell us much about the health of particular populations by identifying trends and patterns. Unlike difficult-to-mine EMR data, information stored in CRM solutions can be easily extracted and analyzed.

Advanced analytics

OperationsHealthcare organizations can use data to improve their operational efficiency and grow their revenue. For example, say that a hospital wants to increase the number of knee surgeries it performs, since this is a profitable procedure. Increasing surgical capacity—by adding surgeons or operating room time—might seem like the right step. Data could show, however, that the real obstacle to performing more knee surgeries isn’t surgical capacity, but the availability of post-surgery physical therapy. With this information the hospital can take action to expand its physical therapy capacity. CRM solutions make it easier to analyze operational data and achieve these kinds of insights.

MarketingHealthcare data can reveal the kinds of products and services patients in a variety of demographics are looking for. With this information a healthcare organization’s marketing team can target their outreach more effectively.

Coordinated careA CRM solution’s reach goes beyond the four walls of the hospital room to cover post-acute care coordination and follow up. This means that at every step of a patient’s journey there’s a record of the providers involved, including physicians, nurse practitioners, homecare nurses, and therapists. The CRM solution also clearly indicates which treatments were undertaken and when.

Because they’re accessing the same data, providers can communicate with each other about a patient’s condition and work together on a care plan. This information-sharing also makes it easy to hand patients off from one caregiver to another. Meanwhile, the patient can be kept up to date through the CRM solution’s patient portal, or by text, email, letter or phone, as the patient prefers.

Automated workflowsCRM solutions automate the process through which providers communicate with their patients. By reducing the need to generate patient communications manually, CRM lets providers focus more on caregiving. In addition, a greater emphasis on electronic communications means using less paper, which is both cost effective and environmentally responsible.

Another advantage of automation is that all contacts with the patient are tracked in the CRM solution, for a more complete picture of the patient’s health history.

Here’s an example of how automation can work in practice. Say that a patient needs his cholesterol checked every six months. Rather than a nurse having to make a call or create and send a reminder postcard, the healthcare organization’s CRM solution could automatically send an email to the patient with a reminder to come in for a blood test. Evidence shows that reminders of this nature are highly effective at getting people to take action.

Automated workflows aren’t just limited to communications functions. They can also be used to streamline many other tasks that are currently done manually.

CRM fully engages patients in their own care

Self-service portals Getting patients more involved with their healthcare is an important step toward achieving better outcomes. One means of fostering engagement is the patient portal, an online, self-service access point that connects patients with their healthcare information.

Patient portals are not a new development. But with a CRM solution, the patient portal becomes more useful and powerful than ever before, enhancing both the patient experience and healthcare delivery.

What are the benefits of a self-service portal?

A portal gives patients a single point of access through which they can share and receive healthcare information, including recent test results.

With a portal, providers can videoconference and instant message with patients securely while staying HIPAA-compliant.

The portal allows patients more control over their healthcare information. For example, patients can make appointments, access their medical history, update their personal information and communication preferences, communicate with their providers, and get hospital pre-admission and post-discharge information.

It’s important to note that while CRM solutions make it easier for patients to connect with their providers, they can also help providers stay on top of their patients’ care needs. For example, if a monitoring device is collecting information about a senior’s heart rate or blood pressure, that data can be transferred automatically from the device to the CRM solution, at which point it can be read by providers. The patient in this case isn’t having to take any action but is still receiving care.

CRM helps call centers get the most from each interactionThanks to CRM, call centers in the healthcare industry can serve patients more effectively. When a patient calls, the staff member answering can access the patient’s record for 360-degree visibility into his or her health situation. This streamlines each communication, because the call center professional can quickly see how the inquiry relates to the patient’s overall healthcare picture.

Moreover, because the subject of every call is entered into the CRM database, the call center staff member can see what actions have been taken previously. This is good news for patients, who are tired of repeating the same information with each contact. For call centers, shorter call times with less repetition are a double win—they improve operational efficiency while creating a better patient experience.

There’s another benefit from linking call centers to a healthcare organization’s CRM solution: every call becomes an opportunity to offer additional services. For example, say a patient calls and the call center agent sees in the CRM solution that the patient is smoker. In addition to resolving the patient’s question, the staff member could also mention a new smoking cessation program and encourage the patient to enroll.

It should be noted that patient privacy and security are of paramount importance, regardless of the issue. Call centers can update the security levels in their CRM solution so that patient information is visible only to those employees who need it, when they need it.

Using CRM for proactive engagementCRM is a two-way street: while patients use CRM solutions to engage more fully in their own care, providers turn to CRM as a means of proactively caring for their patients.

For example, one provider organization is using CRM solutions to manage antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS patients. The CRM system automatically sends text messages reminding the HIV/AIDS patients of an upcoming appointment and asks them if they can make it. If they can’t, a care coordinator then reaches out to reschedule appointments and keep the patients on track.1

This kind of regular, targeted, and timely outreach can make a big difference in terms of ensuring that patients are taking their medication and scheduling follow-up appointments. How patients are contacted—whether by email, text message, phone call, or physical mail—is up to the patient. With a CRM solution’s analytics functionality, providers can choose not only the best times to send messages, but content that’s proven to motivate patients into taking action.

1Microsoft. “As Healthcare Seeks Chronic Care Management Success,CRM Systems Answer the Call,” HIMSS Media PDF (2016).

CRM and virtual health: redefining what it means to see the doctorTelemedicine, a form of virtual health, is a growing trend in healthcare, with 7 million patients expected to engage in telemedicine by 2018. With telemedicine, providers see patients remotely through a video system or mobile device. Despite not being in the room with their patients, doctors are, for many types of conditions, still able to provide the same level of care as they would in an in-person visit.

CRM solutions support the use of telemedicine. With their 360-degree visibility, CRM solutions facilitate virtual care between doctors and patients, but also remote collaboration (tele-collaboration) between doctors and among care teams.

Home monitoring is another form of virtual health. For example, say that a diabetic patient using a home monitor performs regular in-home blood tests and uploads his or her blood glucose readings to the CRM solution through the patient portal. If the readings go out of range, an alert is sent by the CRM solution to the patient’s providers, who can then intervene and offer proactive care by notifying the patient.

In this way, CRM solutions can help caregivers provide excellent care without the patient having to come in for an appointment, or worse, make a trip to the emergency room.

How CRM can benefit population healthCRM solutions can play an important role in supporting population health. While it’s difficult for providers and researchers to see larger patterns or trends from the limited information in EMRs, CRM solutions open up a world of big data. By analyzing clinical, behavioral, and social data, it’s possible to identify at-risk populations—for example, people with pre-diabetes symptoms, or those who live in areas with poor access to healthy food or high crime, or people who may smoke or be overweight.

Once these audiences are identified, providers can reach out to them with targeted campaigns. For example, smokers could get a smoking cessation newsletter; pre-diabetics could be encouraged to enroll in online programs to help self-manage their conditions; and patients known to struggle with their weight could be invited to a free nutrition and exercise seminar.2

2Tracy Picon, “Empower better patient health with Microsoft Dynamics CRM,” Microsoft website (May 31, 2016). Accessed at: https://enterprise.microsoft.com/en-us/industries/health/empower-better-patient-health-with-microsoft-dynamics-crm/

CRM and the Triple Aim of healthcareThe Institute for Healthcare Improvement has identified three goals for the US healthcare system, called the Triple Aim:

• Improving the patient experience of care (including quality and satisfaction)• Improving the health of populations• Reducing the per capita cost of health care

By adopting a CRM solution, healthcare organizations address each of these objectives. As we’ve seen, CRM solutions, unlike traditional EMRs, are designed not just to record specific pieces of information, but to engage patients in their care and improve their overall patient experience.

With powerful analytics tools, CRM solutions enable providers and researchers to understand healthcare trends affecting entire populations—information they can use to devise new treatments and offer care proactively.

Finally, by streamlining administrative processes, making communications more efficient, and reducing unnecessary in-person visits, CRM solutions are helping control healthcare costs.

Putting the power of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to work for healthcare organizationsMicrosoft Dynamics CRM is Microsoft’s CRM solution. With Dynamics, healthcare organizations have a powerful, flexible means of strengthening patient engagement and improving outcomes. Dynamics doesn’t replace the EMR, but rather enhances it, so that providers gain a better understanding of their patients’ health across the entire care continuum.

What are some of the highlights of Dynamics?

Personalized, 360-degree patient care Dynamics encompasses patients’ complete healthcare journey—not just episodic care, but every interaction with providers as well as detailed information about their lifestyle and health goals.

Patient portals, for more engaged patients Patients are expecting a higher level of service than ever before, and Dynamics delivers. Dynamics’ easy-to-use patient portal enables patients to access their medical records, update their contact information, and stay in touch with their provider. Healthcare organizations can also reach out to patients through the portal, for HIPAA-compliant communications.

Coordinated careBy bringing together comprehensive patient information on one platform, including the different providers involved in care, medical history, screenings, and tests, Dynamics enables health providers to see a patient’s complete health picture and offer more appropriate care.

Proactive outreachDynamics allows providers to communicate with patients proactively between visits, for better preventive care. This outreach includes motivational messages about sticking to care plans, coaching on healthy behaviors, and screening reminders. And because the communications are automated, staff members are freed up to be more productive in other areas.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives both providers and patients the tools to achieve the best possible outcomes. To learn more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM, read our white paper, “As Healthcare Seeks Chronic Care management Success, CRM Systems Answer the Call”