Digital innovation throughout the patient journey for Kaiser Permanente

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Health care organizations must, of course, serve patients in times of greatest need, but they must ultimately go beyond that to preventive and holistic tools and services. And that with “digital as a spearhead,” said Prat Vemana, chief digital officer at Kaiser Permanente.

Vemana discussed Kaiser Permanente's digital customer experience (CX) efforts in a live stream at last week's Transform 2022 event.

Coming to healthcare from retail just before COVID-19, Vemana has described himself as “a big student of the value chain.” As an IT leader in any industry, it's important to assess the value chain to see how integrated it is and the efficiencies within it, he said.

Generally, healthcare has been “one of the most fragmented value chains,” Vemana said.

But digital capabilities have helped improve the value chain, closing loops, and creating more cohesive value chains. And, as has been the case across industries, the pandemic has accelerated Kaiser Permanente's digital adoption — and essentially put the wind in the tech's sail in healthcare as a whole, Vemana said.

Kaiser Permanente has four key stakeholders, he explained: members/non-members/communities, client brokers, clinicians and employees. The main focus of Vemana is the latter – it's essential to give them everything they need to be able to support the other categories, he said.

Because the 77-year-old healthcare company has a combination of provider networks, healthcare facilities, laboratories and pharmacies, it has the advantage of being a "closed system" of the data perspective, Vemana said. They can create a 360-degree view of clients — from demographics to medical history — and focus their efforts on the preventative side of healthcare.

This supports the company's mission to "keep members healthier and live longer, healthier lives," Vemana said.

Vemana reported that 84% of Kaiser Permanente members are registered on its digital app, and 94% of them logged in at least once in 2021. And that's across all demographics, he said. -he declares.

Many simply log on to pay bills or view lab results, but the company's goal is to go above and beyond to help them take better care of themselves and provide access to digital healthcare professionals.

"This is a huge opportunity in healthcare," Vemana said.

Kaiser Permanente was an early adopter of electronic health records (EHRs), which allowed the system to standardize workflows and collect valuable data, he said. The company also moved from on-premises to cloud in nine months, created a data lake, and modernized artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure to deploy faster and more efficiently. The company is also exploring governance models around data bias, Vemana said.

Overall, due to issues of governance, confidentiality, model bias and inconsistent standards across the sector, the healthcare sector has been the slowest in adopting good management practices Datas. But it's critical, because "data really is the unlock that healthcare needs," Vemana said.

He pointed out that organizations can have a vision, but if they can't bring it to life with modern tools, “it just becomes an idea, just a PowerPoint slide. It never sees the light of day” , said Vemana.

So the "how" is the most important part.

"It's this whole idea of ​​not just bringing the data, but bringing it in and using it and doing something about it," Vemana said. "This is one of the biggest unlocks we've had to go through in this latest healthcare transformation."

The COVID-19 pivot has allowed Kaiser Permanente to establish a customer-centric taxonomy.

That is, Vemana explained, "How do we help them navigate to the right care, help them receive care, help them manage their condition from end to end?"

Establishing this customer taxonomy required the creation of a new operating model and, with it, new governance structures...