Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in healthcare is highly beneficial as for a hospital chain or a mini-private clinic that provides independent medical practice. Cloud-based healthcare CRM system implementation varies. Various organizations are releasing products, making acquisitions, forming alliances, and forming joint ventures in the healthcare CRM market. The communication module segment of the healthcare CRM market is the essential application segment, accounting for 35.7% of total CRM market sales. The ongoing demand for virtual care is one of the primary drivers of the global healthcare CRM market's growth.
In September, back in 2015, Salesforce presented a new industry-specific solution - Salesforce Health Cloud. Since then it has become a “cloud-based patient relationship management solution” that helps healthcare service providers to have a 360 view of the patient's medical history.
Is Salesforce Health Cloud HIPAA compliant?
Yes. Salesforce has invested considerable resources and effort into achieving HIPAA compliance for its Health Cloud solution. This compliance extends to the handling of protected health information (PHI) and electronic protected health information (ePHI). By adhering to HIPAA's strict standards, Salesforce Health Cloud provides healthcare organizations with a secure and reliable platform to manage patient data. Follow the article to consider this issue in more detail.
Salesforce for Healthcare: Health Cloud is a perfect choice
1. Regulations and compliance
To achieve HIPAA compliance, Salesforce has implemented a range of technical, administrative, and physical safeguards. These include robust encryption mechanisms, access controls, audit trails, and regular security assessments. The Salesforce Health Cloud platform includes tools that healthcare services providers may use to facilitate their compliance requirements from the (HIPAA). For third-party vendors considered to be HIPAA compliant, a business associate agreement must be signed by both parties. This document holds responsibilities on the business to keep protected health information secure. Salesforce Health Cloud includes a business associate agreement. However, note that this BAA only covers data collected within the Salesforce platform. But, “It is Customer’s responsibility to ensure the secure transmission of PHI data to and from the HIPAA Covered Services.”
2. Enhanced Healthcare Service
With the help of Health Cloud, doctors responsible for exact patient treatment can evaluate the progress of the patient. All health condition records are stored in Health Cloud’s Timeline to enable doctors to follow the health journey. The full view of a patients’ data is vital to improve health and care for both: exact patients and future ones. Let’s take a closer look at a few examples:
Collected statistical data can be used to understand the disease deeper. Medical institutions can see risk factors associated with Alzheimer’s disease and related Dementia by sex, race and ethnicity.
After providing clinical studies and having a database of results, clinics can enhance treatments or investigate new approaches for health care.
By analyzing personal data, hospitals can see non-obvious symptoms of some diseases. For example, shortness of breath, jaw pain, and back pain can be neglected but may cause heart attacks in women.
Due to a full view of hospital data, medical facility management can prioritize funding flows. For example, increase the variety of laboratory tests instead of previously planned hiring for the nephrology department.
Monitoring patients' health after discharge from the hospital reduces the readmission rate. If the doctors monitor the patient not only during treatment but also after, then due to accurate recommendations and work with risks, hospitals are able to avoid readmission, which brings them to reduce the overall readmission rate for clinics.
3. Patient Engagement
In the 1990s, the patient‐centered care approach replaced the medical paternalism that has dominated healthcare for decades. Now, patient engagement is increasingly recognized as an integral part of healthcare and a critical component of safe people-centered services. Engaged patients are better able to make fact-based decisions about their care options. Increased knowledge and understanding encourage patients to become actively engaged in their own health, well-being, and healthcare choices.
Salesforce is a platform that allows doctors to understand the patient's needs better and give them the required treatment.
According to a Salesforce report, millennial-aged patients are interested in using new technologies to augment healthcare collaboration with their primary care physician. 60% of millennials prefer using digital options to eliminate in-person visits, and 71% would like their provider to use a mobile app to book appointments, share health data and manage preventive care. Medical institutions' representatives can send messages to patients' smartphones by extending Health Cloud to mobile platforms.
Salesforce enables patients to access their whole medical history from any mobile device through secured, connected, and intelligent features. Here, the patients can communicate personally with their doctors and can benefit from services according to their unique needs.
4. Raised patients’ data awareness
Salesforce Health Cloud users can create profiles for each patient. There, doctors or other medical staff can fully view visitors' data. Patient Profile may include information about the current state of a person's health, prescribed treatment, or notes from previous appointments. Health Cloud is a patient-centered solution that enables hospital teams to collaborate better and faster. That's why profile data can be collected from various sources: from electronic health records to wearable devices. Also, there is a Patient Caregiver Map available for each profile. The Map lets users see all involved in the patient's care process and contacts of relatives or caretakers.
Salesforce Health Cloud Objects
In Salesforce Health Cloud, users have access to a wide set of standard and custom objects for managing patient data and also reaching the specialized health information.
There are the objects used by Salesforce Health Cloud:
Account
Accounts in Health Cloud are patients. Account objects linked to Contact objects.
Tasks
Tasks object in Health Cloud refers to an activity that needs to be done: x-ray appointment, thyroid ultrasound, etc.
Contact
In Health Cloud, the Contacts are the people who are associated with the patients: contacts of relatives, caretakers, etc.
Case Team Member
These are Patient Care Team Members. They can only be contacted but can’t log into Salesforce. Also, they can communicate in Chatter.
User
It might be both: internal salesforce users or community users. First one has access to the records and to patient records. Community users can’t access patient records.
Problems
Problem objects in Health Cloud represent health issues that must be addressed.
Conclusion
The Salesforce platform offers its clients 15 different clouds to satisfy both: typical business needs and the needs of companies belonging to various industry verticals. Salesforce Health Cloud is a CRM cloud solution for medical facilities. This cloud solution by Salesforce offers a variety of features for healthcare institutions. The main one is that hospitals can store and easily access patients' records and improve communication between service providers and their clients. Health Cloud also enables doctors to integrate data from electronic health records (EHR) and data from medical devices. Being a top-notch medical innovation, Health Cloud puts the patient at the center of the care process by giving key advantages to caregivers also.
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