At the recent Becker’s Hospital Review 11th Annual Meeting, Cerner President Donald Trigg and David Bradshaw, former Cerner senior vice president of consumer and employee solutions, participated in a virtual session with ChristianaCare’s Randy Gaboriault, senior vice president, chief digital and information officer. The following article, which provides highlights from their conversation, was originally published May 20, 2021 on BeckersHospitalReview.com. Cerner is proud to support ChristianaCare in its mission to create innovative, effective and affordable systems of care for patients and their families.
To solve business challenges, today's healthcare organizations must leverage the large amounts of clinical and financial data that they amass. The first key to success, however, is developing a sophisticated data strategy.
Donald, David and Randy shared these four best practices for advancing a health network data strategy:
- Healthcare organizations must connect stakeholders in a people-centric way. Leading healthcare organizations are deploying holistic strategies that incorporate providers, patients and payers. From a patient perspective, a rising affordability crisis is affecting how individuals think about their care. "With the 21st Century Cures Act, we will have data liquidity that gives individuals greater access to their healthcare information than ever before. That will affect their decisions about providers and networks," noted Donald. From a payer perspective, disruptive change is playing out around healthcare payment models. This is important since payment mechanisms affect how healthcare is organized and delivered. Providers must consider all these trends as they develop strategies to support community health models.
- The future of health is virtual, and home will be the primary venue of care.  ChristianaCare's strategy for next-generation healthcare delivery is based on the thesis that anything that can be done virtually will be done virtually, and all care that can be done in the home will be done in the home. Partnerships are a critical component of this approach. "We used to think that we had to design everything ourselves and own the capability," Randy said. "However, a vital function doesn't have to be a core competency. You can deliver vital functions through partnerships. Rethinking that drives everything for us."
- Data and interoperability give clinical caregivers greater agency. A lack of seamless integration continues to be a major challenge for the healthcare ecosystem. Patients live "in the wild" where numerous electronic health record systems exist. Gaps in data take agency away from clinical caregiver teams. As a result, taking a leadership position and driving interoperability is critically important for health systems. "We are embracing heterogeneity and building a platform that assembles data in real time," Randy said. "That will get us to the next generation of intelligent, embedded care. We are leaning in and we need partners like Cerner to drive that."
- Patients are becoming active participants in their healthcare. "We see the consumer becoming an active participant in their own healthcare," David said. "The power comes when we can connect the data and transactions that consumers are interacting with." ChristianaCare's charter of "One Patient, One Chart, One Experience" requires seamless integration so all patient data is available in real time, no matter the venue of care. In the past, healthcare providers controlled data creation. Now providers are consuming data produced by patients. In response, ChristianaCare is investing in tools and platforms so patients can ask questions of these complex data sets.
To view the full session on-demand, click here.
