How simplifying your IT platform saves time, money, and resources

Maia Anderson -

Healthcare is too important to run on siloes, outdated infrastructure, and inefficient processes. Using many different point tools and legacy solutions in your IT platform leads to higher costs and takes time away from IT teams to innovate and deliver services needed to keep staff, clinicians, and patients happy. By switching to a single, integrated platform, healthcare IT leaders can reduce costs of their systems, as well as improve overall patient care. 

During a July 22 webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review and sponsored by ServiceNow, three IT leaders shared why switching IT services to a single, integrated platform benefits health systems of all sizes. 

The speakers were: 

  • Drew Koerner, chief solutions architect for healthcare at ServiceNow 
  • Kristen Hoyt, product marketing manager for IT service management at ServiceNow 
  • Bill Hansey, senior product marketing manager at ServiceNow 

Five key takeaways from their discussion: 

  1. Having too many complex systems takes time away from innovation and has a negative impact on earnings. Ms. Hoyt said that at ServiceNow, an enterprise software company that develops an integrated cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows, they help customers that are burdened with too many point tools and legacy solutions. These lead to high costs and poor user experiences. She said IT teams get so bogged down putting out fires that they can't focus on being innovative and delivering critical services.

    "When your data is in multiple places it makes it nearly impossible to make sure that the services the IT team is providing is in alignment with what the patients expect, what the employees expect and what your business stakeholders expect," Mr. Hansey said.

  2. Too much complexity also leads to a lack of visibility and collaboration between IT teams. Without a single, integrated platform, resolving major IT incidents becomes difficult, and teams can become overwhelmed. By using a single platform, IT teams can improve visibility and collaboration to solve major incidents faster.

  3. ServiceNow helped health systems quickly transition to a work-from-home environment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor used ServiceNow's virtual agent to resolve IT issues for its workers when they began to work from home, and the virtual agent was able to solve about 20 percent of issues. With hundreds of employees suddenly working from home, ServiceNow helped Michigan Medicine quickly increase the number and types of services being delivered.

  4. Health systems can use ServiceNow to track employees who have been exposed to COVID-19. At Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, the IT team used ServiceNow to deploy a COVID-19 exposure tracker to monitor employees who had tested positive or were exposed to the virus. The hospital automatically tracked its employees' condition status and auto-generated emails with instructions for staff to respond safely to the virus. The result was increased employee loyalty, as employees knew the hospital was taking steps to keep everyone safe.

  5. Streamlining IT processes saves health systems money and improves overall patient care. According to a study by A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm, system complexity can cause a 3 percent to 5 percent negative impact on earnings before interest and tax. Reducing and removing the burden of having to manage an assortment of hardware brings significant cost savings. ServiceNow's customers have saved a total of $18.4 million by moving to ServiceNow, Ms. Hoyt said, allowing that money to be invested elsewhere to improve overall operations. 

To learn more about ServiceNow's integrated platform and to view the full webinar, click here.

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