How COVID-19 has forced providers to innovate and accelerate their digital “front door”

The COVID-19 pandemic and other healthcare trends have shifted virtual care from a nice-to-have to a necessity. With the rise in patient consumerism and an increased trust in remote care, healthcare providers must innovate and stay ahead of this growing trend. In our August 6 webinar, IDC’s Mutaz Shegewi discussed the impact of telehealth and the digital “front door” for healthcare provider systems in the wake of recent events. To access the full webinar, visit: modernhealthcare.com/DigitalFrontDoorWebinar.

1 The COVID-19 pandemic greatly exacerbated a long list of digital-era stress tests providers are facing.

As many providers have embarked on the long-term journey toward valuebased care, they’ve also been working toward a digital transformation to improve efficiency and bolster the patient experience. It’s a challenging time for providers when you add that to razor-thin margins and M&A-related challenges, and now a full-fledged pandemic. However, it is often these types of challenges that drive resilience and innovation, and where we expect to see the role of healthcare IT in accelerating the digital “front door.”

2 Prior to COVID-19, IT spending had increased significantly at hospitals.

In a 2018 IDC survey, providers said they expected to increase their organization-wide IT spending between 2018 and 2019, in the top three areas of operations and systems infrastructure, revenue cycle and resource management, and clinical documentation and workflow. Software spending was varied, and hardware funding mainly focused on data management and the cloud, as well as scaling access and mobility through laptops and virtual desktop infrastructure, expenditures that proved important for COVID-19 response. As the pandemic challenged providers, IT spending has been diverted to crisis response.

3 Normal IT budgeting and investments are expected to resume anywhere from five to 12 months after the pandemic subsides.

The regional ebb and flow of caseloads and the availability of a vaccine will dictate when health systems go back to “normal.” Best-case scenario, providers take a short-term hit, accelerate AI, telehealth and connectivity investment in the interim, and resume normal budgeting within six months. More likely, budgeted 2020 initiatives will be abandoned as emergency investments take priority. In the worst-case scenario, initiatives are abandoned through 2022 and the supplier market shrinks due to economic downturn that lasts the rest of this year.

4 Providers must form a digital “front door” to scale service capacity beyond physical walls.

COVID-19 has strained physical capacity—the digital “front door” and the virtualization of care allows health systems to overcome that challenge and generate less costly, more rapid and satisfactory responses to service demand, softening inbound burden on services and conserving capacity for patients who need to be physically seen, thereby reducing risk. The digital front door isn’t just front-end telehealth—it constitutes a cross-cutting digital transformation of capabilities that may include scheduling, patient outreach, billing and care coordination, among many other things. .

5 Leaders must consider the post-pandemic era as they forge a path ahead.

Leaders should plan now for the medium- and long-term, in addition to their immediate COVID response. COVID may be a relatively shortterm challenge, but it’s very possible that providers’ future case mix may shift to “majority digital, minority physical.” This will require a massive digital transformation and significant investment in technology. As they devise strategies for the pandemic and beyond, it is crucial that leaders keep the consumer lens in mind, given that patients may no longer be limited by providers’ geographic boundaries.