Challenges

Healthcare costs are rising rapidly, and hospitals are under enormous pressure to keep these costs down and improve their bottom line. They are looking for new ways to achieve greater operating efficiencies and reduce costs. The challenge is balancing these efficiencies with the quality of care. Delivering a better patient experience and providing patient-centered care is a top priority as higher levels of patient satisfaction can produce a healthier bottom line.

Hospitals have discovered that both the level of patient satisfaction and the efficiency of the hospital dramatically improve the more quickly and easily that healthcare practitioners can respond to and act upon a patient’s needs. The ability to access medical records, imagery and hospital databases at the point of care is key. As is the ability to prescribe medication, treatment and diagnostic procedures.

Patients have come to expect their in-hospital experience to be much like a hotel stay. They desire all the conveniences of home, with on-demand services that fit their situation. Among these is the demand for entertainment and internet access – services that hospitals have been unable to deliver cost-effectively and have resulted in increasing a hospital’s costs rather than lowering
them.

Hospitals have begun to realize that there may be significant gains in operating efficiencies through the “connected hospital”, whereby the information network and clinical services are integrated and accessible anywhere throughout the facility – even at the point of care.