The modern healthcare landscape is a maze of data, appointments, and patient interactions. For patient services providers, it can be a frustrating struggle: juggling multiple systems, chasing down patient information, and trying to deliver truly personalized care amidst the chaos.
But what if there was a way to cut through the noise?
Salesforce Health Cloud is a cloud-based platform designed to streamline patient management and empower healthcare professionals. It’s more than a software solution; it’s a bridge to more efficient, connected, and patient-centered care.
In this article, we’ll explore the top 7 Health Cloud features that make a real difference, helping providers reclaim their time and focus on what matters most: delivering exceptional patient experiences.
Bringing Patient Data Together: Health Cloud’s Unified View
Salesforce Health Cloud provides CRM capabilities with a 360-degree view of patient information. How does it work in practice?
Data from EHRs, labs, communication logs, and other sources are in one place. The healthcare providers gain a complete and holistic understanding of each patient’s medical history, current condition, and individual needs. This goes beyond simply collecting patient information, insurance details, and medical history; it creates a dynamic, up-to-date picture.
- With a 360-degree view, providers can create highly personalized care plans that are tailored to each patient’s specific circumstances. This leads to more effective treatment and improved patient outcomes.
- The unified view facilitates seamless communication and collaboration among different members of the care team. Everyone involved in the patient’s care has access to the same information, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring consistent treatment.
Patient Relationship Management for Enhanced Connections
Think of Salesforce Health Cloud’s Patient Relationship Management (PRM) as a way to make healthcare feel more personal. It brings all health information together in one place, so doctors and caregivers can truly understand their patients and provide the care they need.
PRM allows healthcare providers to understand each patient’s unique needs, preferences, and health history. This enables targeted communication, such as sending relevant health information, appointment reminders, or follow-up instructions, through the patient’s preferred channels (e.g., email, text, patient portal).
Online Forms and Assessments
Health Cloud enables online forms and assessments, which allow patients to complete necessary paperwork from the comfort of their own homes. This eliminates the need for lengthy in-person paperwork, reducing wait times and improving patient convenience.
Insurance Verification
Tools that verify patient insurance eligibility streamline determining coverage and understanding out-of-pocket costs for the payer. This reduces the stress and uncertainty associated with healthcare billing and helps patients make informed decisions about their care.
Electronic Prescription Capabilities
E-prescription capabilities allow providers to send prescriptions directly to pharmacies electronically. This eliminates the need for paper documents, reducing the risk of errors and improving patient convenience. Patients also benefit from the ability to receive notifications from their pharmacies when prescriptions are ready.
Patient Portals
Salesforce offers patient portals, which provide them with secure online access to their medical records, appointment schedules, and communication tools. This empowers patients to take an active role in their own care.
Proactive Care
By tracking patient data and identifying potential health risks, PRM enables providers to deliver proactive care. This can include sending reminders for preventative screenings, providing educational materials, or scheduling follow-up appointments.
Easier Teamwork: Streamlining Care Management in the Salesforce Health Cloud
One of the standout features is the platform’s ability to foster collaboration among care teams. Salesforce Health Cloud breaks down silos, allowing seamless communication between providers, specialists, and caregivers. They can share notes and updates in real time, ensuring that everyone has access to the most current patient information. Built-in messaging capabilities allow team members to communicate securely without leaving the platform.
Salesforce Health Cloud allows for task assignment among team members, reducing redundancy and ensuring coordinated efforts toward unified health objectives.
By centralizing patient data from EHRs and other systems, Health Cloud ensures that all care team members work with accurate and up-to-date information when planning or executing care strategies. Further, the platform fosters a collaborative ecosystem where professionals from different disciplines can work together seamlessly to improve patient outcomes.
Ensuring Data Security and Compliance to Build Trust
Firstly, Salesforce Health Cloud is committed to adhering to stringent regulations, particularly those related to HIPAA compliance. This helps hospitals and clinics respect the rules about keeping patient information private. Beyond HIPAA, Salesforce helps organizations comply with other relevant regulations, such as GDPR and HITRUST.
Secondly, Health Cloud employs encryption to secure sensitive patient data, both when it’s stored (“at rest”) and when it’s being transmitted (“in transit”). This safeguards data from unauthorized access.
Finally, how is access granted? You have the power to control who gains access. Access to this data is strictly limited to authorized individuals, who are determined by their roles or badges, similar to the concept of access control in physical security. And there are comprehensive logging and audit trails to track who accessed what data and when.
Powerful Salesforce Health Cloud Features: Analytics and Reporting for Data-Driven Decisions
The AI revolution is indeed transforming the healthcare industry, and Salesforce Health Cloud is at the forefront of this transformation with its integration of Einstein AI for predictive insights and analytics. This powerful combination is reshaping patient care and operational efficiency in several key ways.
- Einstein Analytics employs AI-powered algorithms to analyze vast amounts of patient data, identifying patterns and predicting health outcomes with remarkable accuracy. That way, high-risk patients can be identified before they experience health events and receive early intervention and preventative care.
- The AI-driven insights provide healthcare professionals with the ability to deliver more customized and effective care. They can suggest personalized treatment plans and the next best actions for care teams. Machine learning capabilities analyze patient preferences, medical histories, and lifestyle habits to provide customized care recommendations.
- Advanced analytics capabilities help track key performance metrics and identify areas for improvement in care delivery workflows. AI-driven risk stratification ensures that patients are matched with the right healthcare professionals based on their specific needs.
Engaging Patients Effectively with Health Cloud Features
The platform’s focus on accessibility and engagement aligns with the growing trend of patient-centered care in the healthcare industry. How can patients be encouraged to take an active role in their healthcare journey?
Patient Portals
Patient portals allow patients to access their medical records, schedule appointments, and communicate with their healthcare providers online. This empowers patients to take an active role in their care.
Access to Health Information
Patients can access their health information, educational resources, and tools to track their health progress through mobile devices.
Knowledge Bases
Health Cloud can provide access to knowledge bases, which are collections of articles, FAQs, and other resources that help patients learn about their health conditions and treatments.
Health Campaigns
Healthcare providers can run targeted health campaigns, delivering personalized messages and reminders to patients’ mobile devices. This encourages proactive engagement in preventative care.
Expanding Capabilities with Health Cloud’s Third-Party Integrations
Salesforce Health Cloud supports seamless integration with third-party systems, creating a unified and efficient healthcare ecosystem. How does it work? It consolidates data from disparate sources, such as electronic health records (EHRs), remote patient monitoring (RPM) tools, billing systems, and other healthcare applications, into a centralized platform.
One of the most important integration features is its compatibility with EHR systems. This means that any updates made in one system are immediately reflected in the other, giving care teams access to accurate and up-to-date patient information. This two-way communication follows Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards, ensuring compliance with industry regulations while promoting interoperability.
In addition, Health Cloud integrates with practice management systems, scheduling tools, and billing platforms. These integrations streamline administrative tasks such as scheduling, claims processing, and payment tracking. For example, external scheduling systems can be connected to Health Cloud via middleware or APIs, enabling real-time appointment availability checks and bookings directly within the platform.
By consolidating data from wearable devices or RPM tools, providers can remotely monitor patients and receive alerts about potential health risks. This enables proactive care interventions and personalized treatment plans based on real-time insights.
The platform also supports integration with patient engagement tools such as communication apps or knowledge bases. The patient receives automated reminders, surveys, and educational content.
Salesforce Health Cloud bridges the gap between disparate systems, ensuring that providers have all the tools they need to effectively manage patient care while improving the overall patient experience.
Patient-Centric Care with Health Cloud Features
Undoubtedly, Salesforce Health Cloud helps providers spend more time and attention on patients by automating tasks and centralizing information. Why is it such an important thing?
As the American Academy of Family Physicians notes,
For every hour physicians provide direct clinical facetime to patients, nearly 2 additional hours are spent on EHR and desk work within the clinic day.
Health Cloud addresses this problem by giving healthcare providers more time to focus on building strong relationships with patients and providing excellent care.
Are you interested in implementing Health Cloud within your organization? Our Salesforce development services can help you achieve a more human-centered approach to healthcare, with a focus on the patient and their needs.
