Healthcare Trends Physicians and Nurses Need to Know

IN A NUTSHELL:

• Physicians and nurses must adapt to changing patient expectations
• Digital health technology having major impact on industry
• Healthcare industry trying to catchup to cybersecurity needs

The contemporary healthcare professional has a lot to keep up with, including rapidly evolving technology, furthering patient engagement, changing delivery methods of patient care, and managing increasing costs across the board.

Many of the current healthcare trends are a direct result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, yet they will continue to define the healthcare industry for many years to come.

Here are the top three healthcare trends physicians and nurses need to know:

1. Patient expectations are changing:

Healthcare professionals must understand the expectations of their patients and adapt in order to meet those expectations. Technology, a competitive marketplace, and new societal norms add pressure to healthcare organizations to deliver healthcare in a faster, more convenient, and more patient-centric manner.

The digital age created an expectation of immediacy that is greater than ever. No longer is it considered acceptable for a patient to have to wait an hour for a response from their healthcare facility or provider.

The Millennial Generation is driving a lot of the change in patient expectations as they now outnumber Baby Boomers and are more likely to apply online shopping habits to how they make decisions regarding their healthcare.

What This Means for Healthcare Professionals:

Physicians and nurses must adapt to the changing expectations of their patients—even if that means adjusting a work schedule they have become accustomed to for decades. A growing percentage of the population highlights appointment availability as extremely important criteria when selecting a healthcare provider. Medical facilities and their staff must adapt to meet the demands of their patients by adjusting work hours and adapting new technology for a focus on patient-centered care.

2. Digital Health Technology is Taking Center Stage:

Healthcare systems, individual facilitates, as well as the physicians and nurses that walk their floors must grasp the potential of digital health tools and how they are shaping the industry. This transformation begins at the administrative level—impacting how essential tasks such as medical credentialing, payer enrollment, applications, and delineation of privileges are conducted. The keywords to all of these are automation and digitization. The healthcare industry is shifting from paper-based workflows to digital documents. This expedites the process and allows for additional security when conducting tasks such as credentialing—where time is of the essence for both the health care provider and the facility—in order to avoid loss of revenue.

Ready Doc™ by Intiva Health is an all-in-one solution for credentialing, managing provider rosters, payer enrollment, compliance, and continuing medical education. The platform saves time, saves money, and reduces risk for facilities and their staff.

What This Means for Healthcare Professionals:

The integration of digital health tools and their importance trickles down to those that interact with patients. In order to stay competitive, healthcare professionals must create the optimal patient care experience possible. This can be accomplished from the inside out. A balanced relationship between a healthcare provider and their patient begins with recognizing the level of healthcare services which are expected by the patient, knowing patients have more access to information than ever before, and providers using digital health tools to improve their own career as well as care team coordination.

Vigil by Intiva Health is the essential App for the healthcare professional. The app allows anyone in the healthcare industry, no matter their specialty, to take command of their career and harness the power of their NPI in ways never before seen until now. Vigil creates a digital badge which securely stores a career profile containing all license numbers and essential credentials—easily accessible by a customized QR code. The end result is a provider can verify their identity and reputation—allowing them to treat patients anytime, anywhere. Vigil can be used at a moment’s notice when healthcare is needed—whether that be at the scene of a natural disaster, switching hospitals during a public health crisis, or on an airplane when there is no other way to confirm the skills and qualifications of a physician or a nurse.

Administrative workloads and patient engagement are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the possibilities of digital health. Healthcare professionals can also take accredited, online Continuing Medical Education courses which is a win-win for them and their patients. Online CME courses for physicians and CEU courses for nurses enable healthcare professionals to maintain compliance by meeting state licensure requirements and expand their knowledge base. Ready Doc™ Learning by Intiva Health offers hundreds of accredited courses for all types of licensed medical professionals.

3. Increased Focus on Healthcare Cybersecurity

The caveat to digital health technology becoming the new norm for healthcare systems to handle an array of tasks is the rise in cybersecurity attacks. Healthcare has always been an attractive target for cyber criminals due to how valuable the data is, yet the industry saw a surge of high-profile ransomware attacks throughout 2020 costing the industry more than $20 Billion.

This is primarily due to the COVID-19 Pandemic causing a rush to virtual environments and technology that lacked proper security which in turn created new vulnerabilities. Many people working in healthcare began using their own portable electronic devices and internet service providers. Care team communication moved to unsecured email, and telehealth launched on platforms which were never designed to be HIPAA-compliant, such as Zoom and FaceTime.

What This Means for Healthcare Professionals:

Healthcare professionals, as well as the facilities they work in, must be diligent in their efforts to ensure healthcare data remains secure. This applies to the credentials of staff members and any communication that contains sensitive patient data or PHI. If healthcare organizations don’t upgrade their existing systems, cyberattacks and data breaches will only intensify.

Ready Doc™ by Intiva Health uses Hashgraph-based distributed ledger technology (DLT) to offer the fastest and most secure credentialing platform on the market. All provider documents contain an immutable, digital time stamp to ensure authenticity with the security of Hashgraph asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT)—the highest degree of security a consensus algorithm can provide.

Ready Doc™ by Intiva Health:

To learn more about how medical facilities and all of its healthcare professionals can be ready with Ready Doc™, schedule a FREE demo online today or call 844-413-2602.

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