Implementing and Utilizing Integrations in Healthcare

Properly integrated clinical systems can have a significant impact on care team efficiency and, as a result, patient outcomes. So when we say integrations can make or break care delivery, it may sound like a strong claim, but it’s the truth.

If your communications are siloed, missteps are bound to happen. In fact, roughly 27% of medical malpractice cases are tied to communication failures,¹ which is why avoiding better-integrated tech may just be more costly in the long run.

But integration isn’t a one-and-done task—it’s an ongoing process. A journey is easier with a map, so check out the roadmap below to get an idea of how to implement key healthcare integrations and drive real ROI for your organization.

Top Healthcare Integration Strategy Takeaways

• Integrations prevent miscommunication: Siloed systems lead to errors; integrated tech improves efficiency and patient outcomes.
• Follow a roadmap: Assess pain points, set goals, engage stakeholders, and roll out changes gradually.
• Test before full deployment: Pilots are a must for integrations; they help to minimize disruptions, spot trouble areas, and ensure stakeholder buy-in.
• Track ROI and future trends: Measure stats like response times, cost savings, and provider satisfaction where possible; AI-driven healthcare will shape the future of integration.

How to Build an Integration Roadmap

Step 1) Assess Readiness and Identify Pain Points

Step one to building an integration roadmap is all about understanding your current state. What clinical, IT, and telecom systems do you have in place now, what pain points or gaps are they creating, and what do your strategic goals look like in a world where these pain points can be alleviated?

Pain points caused or made worse by technology systems or poor processes might include high cost, slow message delivery, unfair schedules, and clinician burnout, to name just a few. Pay special attention to pain points that directly impact patient care. And while the concerns of nurses and physicians should be weighed heavily since they play essential care delivery roles, make sure to consider the frustrations of admins, techs, and other support staff as well.

Step 2) Define What Success Looks Like

To measure what’s working and what isn’t, you first need to define what success means for your organization. What outcomes are you aiming for?

These might include cost and time savings, more efficient delivery of alerts & alarms, fairer schedules, or improved provider satisfaction. If these KPIs can be measured quantitatively, identify their current benchmarks and set goals for improvement.

Success is a long-term process, so start with achievable goals. For example, you might first deploy an integration to improve clinician schedules, which could later support hiring more providers as part of a broader workforce management effort. Both goals matter, but it’s okay to tackle one first and achieve the next over a longer period of time.

Step 3) Prioritize Governance and Stakeholder Engagement

Kevin Johnson, Manager of Integrations Operations at PerfectServe, says it best: “Stakeholders are going to be key to the success of a new workflow.”

It’s not always easy to get clinicians on board with change when it comes to new technology and new workflows. However, if you give them a seat at the table to express their needs early on, they’ll be that much more likely to get on board later.

Secure buy-in from physicians, nurses, operational leaders, and IT from the beginning and keep them informed throughout the integration process. Ignoring stakeholders is one of the best ways to ensure project failure.

Don’t forget to include a central governance plan to hold all stakeholders accountable. This can also make or break a successful integration strategy. After all, if a good portion of your staff don’t know how, when, or why to use a new piece of technology … they just won’t use it at all!

Overcoming Integration Implementation Challenges

Step 4) Navigate the Technical Landscape

On the IT side, identify integration points and document them thoroughly to head off unforeseen issues. As Kevin noted, “Some of these [new] workflows can be disruptive, and if they’re not vetted out properly, they can cause more problems than they solve.”

He recommends testing new integrations at a pilot site for enterprise deployments. This could mean testing the integration within one department to learn how the process can be smoothed out on a larger scale for the rest of the deployment.

Step 5) Phase in Changes Carefully

As the old saying goes, “Slow and steady wins the race.”

After testing and completing an integration project at a pilot site, the next step is to scale it across other sites—gradually.

A phased rollout ensures each location integrates smoothly with new and existing tech while allowing governance and change management teams to monitor adoption and support users who need help.

Throughout the deployment, Kevin warns that IT teams need to watch for overhead and take their time to understand data workflows between systems. Some development work will be crucial for getting data to flow properly.

Another important detail: Partner with vendors who will stand by your side during integration projects! Bumps in the road are almost guaranteed, so you need a vendor with the right expertise who’s also willing to talk, troubleshoot, brainstorm, and test whenever the need arises.

Measuring ROI of Integrations

Step 6) Demonstrating Value: Measuring ROI

It’s often difficult to attach a definitive timeline for ROI data in these projects, but nevertheless, it’s important to track metrics before and after deployment to help measure success. By establishing benchmarks early, you can demonstrate tangible improvements over time.

Healthcare integration ROI value points include:

• Faster response times for things like lab and radiology results
• Reduction in unnecessary alerts and messages
• Significant time and cost savings
• More effective system/solution utilization
• Increased reimbursement rates
• Higher patient and staff satisfaction scores
• Elimination of redundant data entry
• Improved physician experience with embedded workflows 

This may seem like a broad list, but whether you’re deploying a scheduling system that allows for more physician vacation days or an automated workflow for an important clinical process, the range of potential improvements that can be achieved using technology is wide.

Tracking these metrics ensures your integration efforts are well understood and drive meaningful results—both operationally and financially.

Healthcare Integrations for Health Systems with Limited Resources

Not all organizations have the funding to invest in deeply integrated technology, but that doesn’t mean there’s no hope for addressing problems like communication siloes.

Many organizations have multiple communication platforms, typically acquired through mergers & acquisitions or the (less popular but still somewhat prevalent) tendency for different locations and departments to buy narrowly focused point solutions. It’s probable you have tools in your arsenal that could 1) be utilized better or 2) be implemented stronger with improved governance.

Another important note is to calculate current costs and identify if another vendor could provide your organization with a better suite of clinical communication solutions for a better price. Paul Warburton, Senior Market Research Analyst at KLAS Research, gave some sage advice: “A communications purchase should be a communications consolidation process as well.”

The Future of Clinical Communication Integrations

The goal with health IT integrations is to eliminate redundant solutions and reduce instances of siloed tech, and AI will step in to expedite the process.

Paul notes that AI will be useful in identifying faster ways to communicate and coordinate patient care. It will also be instrumental in streamlining the change management needed to coordinate integrations between solutions.

Paul also thinks there will be some sort of  national infrastructure providing a framework for improved communication workflows between clinicians, but it won’t be anytime soon.

“If you think about what TEFCA [Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement] is doing for patient document exchange, that does not exist for physician messaging or physician communication back and forth at a national level,” he said. “What most providers are really asking for … is that national infrastructure that needs to exist. It would be great, but it just seems like a long road to getting to something like that for the world of communications.”

Paul Hess, Senior Director of Research at KLAS Research, noted that while AI is a promising technology, it’s not a one-size-fits-all tool. He says it’s best to take a cautious approach to what AI can do and how useful it will be to each organization, depending on what it’s used for.

Embracing Integration for Improved Outcomes

Integrations can transform care team efficiency and patient outcomes—but only if you have the right strategy in place.

Before adding new tech, get clear on your pain points and goals. You can’t measure success without a target. Some of the biggest ROI drivers, like efficiency, satisfaction, and patient care, aren’t always tied to hard numbers.

To dig deeper into the possibilities, check out a more comprehensive list of essential healthcare integrations.

Sources:

1. Poor communication by health care professionals may lead to life-threatening complications: examples from two case reports, National Library of Medicine: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6694717/#:~:text=Effective%20physician%2Dpatient%20communication%20is,health%20professionals%20in%20South%20Asia.