Highlights:
- Integrating robust collaboration tools (message, video, and phone) with purpose-built mobile devices improves point-of-care efficiency
- Providers can increase chronic care management reimbursements with simple, one-click outbound calls and automated tracking of patient phone time
- Aggregating disparate patient data into a single-view window enables patient support staff to increase single call resolutions and patient satisfaction
Patients and healthcare workers agree: the expansion of delivery models is an important step towards improving access and satisfaction with the healthcare system. But meeting consumer-driven patient expectations and persistent clinician burnout requires new approaches to communications in order to overcome inherent challenges and complexities.
RingCentral Research: Collaboration-enabled care
According to recent RingCentral research:
- 90% of clinical and patient experience executives believe their current communications platform creates care communication gaps and inefficiencies
- Half of healthcare teams say current communication tools and processes are contributing to staff burnout
- Three quarters believe collaboration improvement can better the patient experience, aid in the implementation of evidence-based standards, and prevent or reduce adverse events
As a survey of RingCentral customers shows, deploying a unified communications solution yields significant improvements on these fronts for all end users: RingCentral customers report a 47% increase in patient satisfaction and a 32% boost to staff productivity.
Healthcare organizations are intensely focused on improving these metrics further, both to better the patient experience and grow operational efficiencies. In our collaboration-enabled care research survey, 60% of respondents said collaboration improvement is a Top 3 priority for their organization.
At RingCentral, we’re just as relentlessly focused on helping healthcare providers to achieve this goal. That’s why we’re excited to announce new partnerships with leading healthcare solution providers Ascom, ChronicCareIQ, and ELLKAY that bring transformative new capabilities to RingCentral Message Video Phone™ (MVP™) and RingCentral Contact Center.
All-in-one communications are a key tool
The evolution of healthcare demands solutions that remove the complexity of connecting care teams and patients through robust all-in-one communications—message, video, and phone—at the point of care and during other time-sensitive patient encounters.
But to meet the full spectrum of patient and provider needs, solutions need to provide an all-in-one framework that supports the full care continuum, from administrative tasks such as scheduling and billing to multi-team care coordination and proactive patient post-treatment follow-up.
To that end, we’ve defined collaboration-enabled care as a common, singular collaboration framework that allows staff and patients to efficiently and securely collaborate throughout the care delivery cycle. Our new partnerships build on the efficiencies of RingCentral MVP and RingCentral Contact Center to better integrate communications within complex clinical workflows.
New capabilities, new benefits
Through newly announced partnerships with Ascom, ChronicCareIQ, and ELLKAY, we’re closer than ever to delivering on the goal of collaboration-enabled care. Here are some ways our new joint solutions shrink the ongoing gaps with which healthcare providers continue to struggle.
Interoperable mobile devices
Flexible care delivery requires agile hardware that enables providers to treat patients and perform other aspects of their jobs from the point of care or anywhere within a facility.
Via our partnership with Ascom, RingCentral MVP becomes the first cloud communications platform to enable interoperability and offer comprehensive healthcare tools at the point of care.
New devices include a suite of mobile handsets such as the Ascom Myco 3, which can utilize the RingCentral MVP mobile app. Putting these capabilities in providers’ pockets shrinks communication gaps and inefficiencies that can occur at the point of care, promotes collaboration among all members of healthcare teams, and fully empowers providers to deliver the best care from any location.
Phone time tracking capabilities
With more than 20 Care Management-related codes covered by Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and Commercial Payers, and documentation requirements for remote medical reimbursement, the delivery of virtual healthcare has added a significant administrative burden for healthcare organizations. But both clinicians and support teams tell RingCentral that these backend challenges translate into negative patient experiences.
Our partnership with ChronicCareIQ streamlines activities related to the delivery of phone-based care, helping to simplify this channel.
The new ChronicCareIQ app integration enables:
- One-click outbound calls to patients
- Automatic tracking calls with patients and caregivers
- Easy documentation to allow for improved chronic care management (CCM) and remote patient monitoring (RPM) reimbursements
Unified patient information in a click
Delivering the best care requires a bird’s-eye view of all a patient’s data, including information from disparate sources and providers. Together with ELLKAY, a leader in healthcare data and end-to-end systems connectivity, RingCentral users have an organized, aggregated view of patient information within the ELLKAY platform via incoming call-generated screen pops to the call center agent screen.
Providing instant, complete access to patient data empowers call agents to resolve patient queries within a single call, also promoting greater patient satisfaction from such interactions.
Making collaboration central to healthcare delivery
Communication and collaboration have always been central to effective healthcare provider-patient relationships. But the expansion of delivery models adds new complexities—and delivering the best experiences for patients and staff alike requires new technologies to support communications and workflows.
Delivering optimal healthcare requires putting collaboration at the core, with workflows and technology that improve clarity and efficiency. Our new partnerships are one way we’re supporting this evolution.
Ready to learn more about RingCentral’s healthcare capabilities? Learn more now
Originally published Oct 21, 2021, updated Oct 26, 2021