Priorities in healthcare software spending on connectivity.

Dr. Christine Gall, Healthcare Expert, T-Mobile for Business

IDC Health Insights performed a survey¹ in 2022 across 300 U.S. healthcare provider organizations to understand strategic priorities and investment patterns related to a range of topics. These included digital healthcare transformation, IT infrastructure modernization, consumer engagement and others.

Overall, the survey participants confirmed an increase in software and healthcare IT spending from 2022 to 2023.

Hospital-at-home. The American Hospital Association (AHA) reports that "hospital-at-home enables some patients who need acute-level care to receive care in their homes, rather than in a hospital. This care delivery model has been shown to reduce costs, improve outcomes and enhance the patient experience."⁵

Hospital-at-home services can be customized based on the needs and capacity of the hospital and its patient population. Some programs are run out of emergency departments, while others depend upon community paramedics or specialty clinics to refer patients into the program.

The AHA indicates that although execution of hospital-at-home services can vary, they share many similarities. For example, hospital-at-home care "is well-suited for medium acuity patients who need hospital-level care but are considered stable enough to be safely monitored from their homes."⁶

Healthcare services that can be provided by hospitals in the home setting include diagnostics such as electrocardiograms, echocardiograms, and x-rays, treatments like oxygen therapies, IV medication delivery, phlebotomy, and services like respiratory therapy and skilled nursing.

Digital patient engagement/care coordination. According to HIMSS⁷, the ideal digital patient engagement platform "will enable multi-language, multi-channel outreach (including SMS) as well as two-way communication that drives action."

This high-end connectivity solution should be highly personalized and fully integrated with the electronic health record and other monitoring technology. With the goal to replace numerous manual communications, such as visit scheduling, patient education, referral and appointment management, remote monitoring support calls, and other routine operational functions.

Digital patient engagement can play a critical role in care coordination. As Health IT News⁸ notes, "Healthcare providers also should leverage telehealth to facilitate the patient journey. Far too often, patients are left to their own devices when it comes to coordinating follow-up care."

Digital front door. A digital front door is viewed as a healthcare strategy to leverage commonly used technology to improve the patient experience. In a 2022 webinar hosted⁹ by Becker's Hospital Review, Mutaz Shegewi, research director of IDC Insights, defined a digital front door as "all the touchpoints where providers can digitally interact with patients to drive better access, engagement and experiences across the service continuum."

The digital front door is designed to replace or assist with traditional manual or in-person tasks, such as appointment scheduling. While healthcare providers know adopting digital front door solutions will come with hurdles—collecting accurate data, scheduling complexities, and altering the payment process—there is a willingness to adopt tech as it removes communication barriers.¹⁰

The IDC Survey highlighted hospitals and health systems in the U.S. facing a variety of challenges, including staff shortages, decreasing profit margins, competition from new and emerging care models, increased consumerism, and cyberthreats.

A substantial number of these organizations are investing in digital connectivity, with their top five most important strategic business goals cited as the following:

• Quality improvement
• Increasing technology capacity and scale
• Improved patient safety
• Medical equity, diversity, and cultural competency
• Improved access to care

Furthermore, 78% of hospitals and health systems surveyed reported they planned to increase their overall organization-wide IT spending. The top three areas of budget increase will be dedicated to clinical documentation and workflow, digital patient engagement and experience, and IT operations and system infrastructure.

For more insights focusing on the benefits of digital connectivity in healthcare from Dr. Christine Gall, please visit T-Mobile for Business – Healthcare.