More than ever, healthcare has shifted to team-based care, increased specialization, and experienced an explosion of digital data alongside strict regulations for security and patient privacy. Contributing to these challenges, the tools healthcare providers use for coordinating patient care are often fragmented and impede the collaborative workflows required in a complex care environment.

As the healthcare industry shifts to a value-based care model, medical professionals, insurance agencies, and patients alike are looking for ways to improve the way they work together. Ultimately, this comes down to finding better ways to communicate and collaborate, and many in the healthcare industry are finding solutions in Microsoft’s productivity solution Teams.

Better Communication & Collaboration in Healthcare

Microsoft Teams is more than just another group chat application. Teams empowers care groups and enables healthcare organizations to securely collaborate and communicate. Built on the secure, compliant Microsoft 365 cloud, Teams gives all healthcare workers a familiar way to communicate in real-time, improve operational efficiencies, and coordinate patient care.

Teams Is Solving Problems for Healthcare

Microsoft commissioned the global research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan to complete an evaluation of Microsoft 365 for healthcare organizations, concluding that Teams directly addresses the top challenges facing healthcare providers with a modern, chat-based communication tool that doesn’t require compromising on security and compliance.

“Based on our research, Microsoft Teams directly addresses the top challenges facing healthcare providers in electronic messaging in hospitals and health systems,” said Greg Caressi of Frost & Sullivan.

According to Frost & Sullivan research, the most common pain points hospitals and health system executives (including clinical staff) face regarding electronic clinical messaging include issues related to security and improving how clinical staff can collaborate better in a convenient or seamless way.

Teams has features specifically designed for healthcare, such as advanced messaging and alerts for urgent messages, automatic follow-ups, and read receipts. The flexibility of communication is an important focus, whether it relates to a team member on-call or a physician covering for a colleague while in an operating theater. The ability to variably message other users one-to-one or one-to-a-group, as well as deliver broadcast level messaging organization-wide are also valued capabilities by providers.

Security Peace of Mind to Focus on Care

When physicians, nurses, and other clinically oriented staff need to communicate within the hospital, they are faced with an important first choice — to use a method which is secure and compliant with data governance and protection regulations (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR, etc.3), or not. Effective protection of PHI and sensitive healthcare data is a central concern of healthcare organizations today.

This balance of compliance and convenience has been an ongoing challenge for care teams to achieve. As a result, many clinicians have resorted to using consumer chat apps as part of their patient care, which creates a Shadow IT problem and poses significant risks to security, compliance, and patient data privacy. This can also result in heavy fines for inappropriate data governance and protection in the highly-regulated healthcare industry.

Microsoft Teams alleviates these concerns by creating a secure and productive work experience. Most importantly, Teams is constantly evolving, keeping up with the ever-changing technology and security landscape.

How to Get Started

BDO Digital has helped many organizations in the healthcare and life science industry with their digital transformation journey, whether by improving customer experience and retention or leveraging their data to make better-informed decisions.

To learn more about BDO Digital's Healthcare Solutions, contact us to discuss how we can help modernize your healthcare and life science systems.