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The New Relationship With Tech

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By Monica E. Oss, Chief Executive Officer, OPEN MINDS

I’ve been thinking a lot about “digital transformation” in the health care space—or at least the broad chasm between experiences. Pushing the envelope are the retail players (Walmart, Amazon’s One Medical, CVS, etc.) and digital first service provider organizations (BetterHelp, Talkspace, etc.)—with a smooth web-based consumer experience. On the other hand, some traditional provider organizations and health plans seem to be struggling. Many health plan managers have admitted that they can’t participate in innovative reimbursement models because of the inflexibility of their inflexible claims payment technology. And the consumer interface with many traditional provider organizations hasn’t improved much. I recently tried to schedule a specialist appointment for a friend. The experience was a cascading series of failures—from web site errors, to unanswered telephone calls, to the wrong appointment (when my friend finally got an appointment, upon arrival she was told it was the “wrong clinician” and he couldn’t help her).

The question for every organization in the health and human service market space is how to get from where they are to where they need to be, in terms of customer experience. How do executives plan for the people, processes, and technology for digital transformation that leads to a competitive consumer experience? I found the framework in 10 Principles For Modernizing Your Company’s Technology to provide a solid approach to moving from “buying technology” to developing a “tech-enabled customer-centric” enterprise. The key elements aren’t surprising:

  • Plan carefully—and plan to invest in project management and transformational leadership as well as the technology
  • Put the customer first—and implement first the changes that bring the “biggest benefits” to customers
  • Simplify the system—with a focus on agility and speed of change
  • Engage the workforce
  • Change how “technology” is purchased—organize by functionality and look beyond just purchasing software
  • Change your relationship with the suppliers of technology-related products and services

But as every manager knows, what sounds relatively simple on paper can be difficult to realize.

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The last element of the framework—the changing relationships with suppliers—is fundamental to digital transformation. As technology moves from an ancillary role to a central role in competitive advantage, technology and technology-related suppliers are key to most organization’s future sustainability. The shift that needs to happen is moving each provider organization’s relationship to their tech suppliers from one of “vendor” to “long-term partners”. That partnership should be a working relationship that involves “fair” fees, a mutual commitment to success, and creative collaboration around problem solving.

The executive teams of provider organizations or tech companies are at varying places when it comes to the shift from “vendor” to “partner” relationships. To test where your organization is on this transition, take the ten-question quiz on EHR vendor partnerships in Is Your EHR Vendor A Partner For Long-Term Growth & Success?. Your answers are a good indication of the evolution of your relationship with your tech suppliers.

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But making the transition from transactional sales to partnerships involves investment on both sides of this equation. Provider organization executive teams need to rethink how they plan their technology infrastructure—with key drivers of organization strategy and the customer experience. Technology organization executive teams need to invest in a different type of account management—focused on the overall business objectives of their provider organization customers and how they provide solutions to their strategic challenges.

So how do you find a technology partner as opposed to a vendor? My colleague Christy Dye, OPEN MINDS senior associate, had some advice. “First of all, when you evaluate a tech proposal and their demo, evaluate how much of their solution functionality and roadmap includes initiatives or functions that align with future strategic initiatives—integrated care, population health, SODH screening, consumer engagement, etc. And the best way to get a perspective on the customer relationships of a tech supplier works with their customers is to ask their customers. Find out if they are gaining or losing customer accounts. Get concrete case studies of user success stories and do some digging. Also, ask their customers how quickly they respond to problem resolution and the need for new customization.”

How fast this digital transformation happens in health and human services—and the emergence of a new relationship between provider organizations and their supplier of technology solutions—is not clear. But it is unlikely that the executive teams of traditional provider organization will set the timeline. The emerging competition—the retail players and digital first provider organizations—are setting the pace for changing customer expectations by leveraging technology.