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NHIA recap: Automation is everything

Christopher Lieu
April 26, 2023
Pharmacy

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Brightree’s Chris Lieu recently attended the NHIA’s annual conference. Here are his key take-aways.

A record crowd and great interest

This year’s event saw a significant growth in attendance. Some 1,500 home and alternate site infusion professionals got together for four days of networking, education and expo. Overall, I’d say the amazing advancements in software technology (many by Brightree if you don’t mind the shameless plug) and the automated solutions they provide was the main highlight of the show. Reducing the administrative burden and adopting new models of care to deal with staffing challenges and improve workflow efficiencies were themes I heard again and again.

The industry is rife for change

The amount of traffic at our booth, the interest in the many new product demos, the feedback from the industry – it was a great experience in every sense. What it revealed is that our industry is really hungry for software partner solutions, whether that’s Brightree, or any of our competitors. Providers are ready to make a change, but they also have high expectations. They want to make sure that whatever they change to, it’s a long-term partnership designed to benefit them in the future, while solving their needs and fixing their problems today.

Be prepared to answer five key questions

Beyond being dazzled by new technology, savvy customers were also looking for real-world answers. The most common questions we heard were:

  • What can your software do for us to make our jobs easier?
  • How do we allow clinicians to be clinicians, and minimize friction when they’re using our software?
  • Who would have the best software to integrate with?
  • How can we pull in data from third-party sources like labs more easily and faster?
  • How exactly do we automate to reduce manual labor and take better care of the patient?

Target your booth to the right persona

The Brightree booth was popular because we had it set up so visitors could go to individually focused demo stations. An intake person may just want to see intake, they may not want to see billing. Pharmacists may only want to see the pharmacy portion, and so on. Individualized booths showing customized solutions generated a lot of traffic and tons of interest. We also offered 30-minute end-to-end workflow demos which were new for us and proved to be extremely popular with attendees. Our six innovative stations and group demos highlighted software solutions in Digital Experience, Pharmacy, Logistics, Billing and Reimbursement, Intake and Advanced Analytics.

Too many solutions is not necessarily a good thing

One common pain point in our industry right now is that there are so many solutions out there that people use. It’s not all through one software, either. In fact, there are so many different software solutions being used throughout their workflow that it can be difficult and confusing  to have all the software integrate and talk to each other. Isn’t technology supposed to make our lives easier? Well, this happens to be something that Brightree does very well. We are always looking for integrations – and we have many integration partners experiencing success.

Automate the patient experience

In the “Dreamers Wanted Session: Re-imagining the Patient Experience” session that I co-led at the conference, it all boiled down to one thing: take out the manual labor where you can and really automate the patient experience. If manual touchpoints are all automated and the patient is able to respond digitally to providers throughout the entire dispensing process, that’s what will bring about the best patient experience. And not just that – it will also improve employee engagement and bolster the employee experience as well.

Deliver optimal patient outcomes

From a PharmD perspective, I am always thinking as a clinician. And the main thing you want to see as a clinician is optimal patient outcomes. This means ensuring patients get their deliveries on time while experiencing minimal annoyance or frustration. With automation, clinicians free up more time to focus on the patient. Anytime you can reduce patient touchpoints while getting the same information to patients quicker, is a win-win.

Create a friction-less e-commerce workflow

Everybody talks about the Amazon experience of a frictionless e-commerce workflow. No one calls Amazon to tell them what they want. It’s all done via the app, through normal, quick, nonverbal communications. This same experience aligns with the Brightree’s Pharmacy Product  division. We want people to work up to their highest capabilities, while reducing friction in the workflow.

It’s all about automating our system, making it more convenient for the patient and more efficient and scalable for our customers. They should be able to just do their jobs, and not even think about using any system. It’s got to be that easy. It’s got to be that beneficial. It’s got to be that efficient.

At Brightree, our industry-leading solutions are automating workflow to improve the provider, employee and patient .  See how.

 

 

Christopher Lieu

Christopher Lieu
Clinical Product Manager, Brightree

Christopher Lieu has always been passionate about the healthcare and technology sectors. This passion has led him to obtain his PharmD degree from the Medical University of South Carolina and pursue his MBA degree from Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business. Since graduating with his Doctorate of Pharmacy Degree, he has completed a residency in Home Infusion Pharmacy. He has also worked as a Clinical Oncology Pharmacist as Northside Hospital. Currently, Christopher is the Clinical Product Manager at Brightree for our Home Infusion Pharmacy platform.

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