Collaboration brightens Intermountain Health’s Most Wired Level 10 status

As a Digital Health Most Wired (DHMW) Level 10 organization, Intermountain Health is an example of how providers can stay on the leading edge of using technology to improve operations, experience, engagement, and care.

In Part One, we highlighted Intermountain’s work to advance interoperability and the use of AI and analytics to power insights and outcomes. In this second installment, we explore the health system’s focus on patients, staff, and vendor partnerships to ensure digital health progress is collaborative effective, innovative, and impactful.

The engaged patient: A partner in care

To keep patients central to the healthcare experience, Intermountain Health prioritizes patient engagement by making healthcare services as user-friendly and accessible as possible. In addition to emulating best practices from industries known for user-centric experiences (e.g. retail, banking, and travel) they also actively seek real-time patient feedback to tailor services and respond to needs.

For instance, Intermountain uses surveys, dashboards, and real-time feedback to improve patient and employee experience. “It has active listening features that can identify areas of friction, allowing us to respond appropriately with the right person and action,” Richardville said.

Intermountain goes beyond the basics of frictionless experience by connecting patients to resources via the EMR through integration with the customer relationship management software.

“It’s been integrated in the workflow, making it easy for the patient to get connected with our services and for our clinicians to do that outreach,” explained Nick Iannoni, Vice President of Data Services. “We’re using technology to amplify outreach for those targeted populations, getting them to easily work with our applications, services, and caregivers.  Our goal is reducing the friction for patients and clinicians to engage.”

The data from these patient interactions contributes to holistic patient profiles. “Regardless of the application we are implementing, the goal is to ensure all of the data informs and improves that patient experience,” Iannoni noted.

Collaboration: Building a culture of shared success

Successful digital health implementation requires a collaborative effort from all stakeholders. Intermountain Health fosters a culture where nurses, physicians, patients, and IT professionals work together in harmony.

“Nurses are innovators,” Fox said. “Nurses make up the largest workforce in healthcare organizations and have never worked in siloes but have worked across many clinical areas.” This means nurses can offer unique and practical perspectives.

She noted many problems organizations like Intermountain are looking to solve most likely will impact nurses, as well as doctors, advanced practice practitioners (APPs), dietitians, and many other types of clinicians. Thus, for any technology that considered, they seek crucial input from all stakeholders.

“For example, if we roll out a mobile smartphone to nursing staff, we’re also going to roll out a smartphone to physical therapy, to dietitians, to environmental services and other caregivers who are a part of the collaborative care team. Each one of those roles will use the technology in a different way, so it’s really important to have their perspectives, to learn and really gather as much information as you can from those roles, and ensure we are implementing technology to enhance everyone’s workflows.”

Another cultural component is an innovation mindset. According to Richardville, Intermountain has a rich history around innovating, creating new methods of practicing medicine, and focusing on value, health, and care.

“As opposed to hiring a leader with ‘innovation’ in their title, every one of our caregivers drives innovation as part of their job,” he explained. “A large number of our digital health enhancements come from our caregivers working on the front line.”

Intermountain also monitors other industries for ideas and tech that can be adapted to healthcare. “Innovation is not necessarily invention,” he advised. “It can be taking an existing idea or tool and reapplying it to your environment in an innovative or different way than it was in the past.”

Strategic vendor partnerships: A force multiplier

In the spirit of collaboration, hospitals and health systems amplify their digital health efforts through strategic vendor partnerships. Intermountain Health partners with best-in-class vendors, seeking not only cutting-edge technology but also expertise from other industries.

“Vendor partnerships are essential for deploying new technologies and ensuring interoperability across different systems,” highlights Becky Fox. “The best partnerships with vendors are ones that really embrace a collaborative approach rooted in trust and transparency.”

It helps that vendors increasingly employ people with clinical experience and health systems increasingly employ clinicians with vendor experience. For Fox and Intermountain, the goal of these partnerships is to rise together. “We want the vendor to be successful because when they’re successful we’re successful,” she stated.

The lighted path forward

Intermountain is really driven by its mission to help people live the healthiest lives possible, Fox noted.

“Whether from a cybersecurity, interoperability, or clinical perspective, we want to be at the forefront of helping to drive healthcare forward,” she said. “This means that if we figure out a better way of caring for patients, an easier way of improving interoperability, or a safer way from a cybersecurity perspective, then we will participate in national organizations and even international organizations to share and collaborate around this knowledge and help raise the bar.”

The future of digital health is bright, with Intermountain Health serving as a beacon of innovation. By embracing these best practices and fostering collaboration, healthcare organizations can illuminate the path towards a future where technology empowers patients and transforms healthcare delivery.

About InterSystems

InterSystems is the leading provider of data technology for extremely critical data in healthcare. InterSystems brings disparate data into a single reality, creating a unified vision that enables informed decisions and powerful outcomes. Its cloud-first data platforms solve scalability, interoperability, and speed problems for large organizations around the globe.

InterSystems also develops and supports unique managed services for hospital EMRs, unified care records for communities and nations, and laboratory information management systems. InterSystems is committed to excellence through its award-winning, 24/7 support in more than 80 countries. Over 1 billion healthcare records are managed using InterSystems technology around the world.