Why operational excellence is critical to clinical outcomes, financial health, and workforce well-being
Healthcare has always been a team sport. However, the complexity of today’s healthcare environment requires an exceptional level of collaboration to ensure the delivery of high-quality, financially sustainable care. Health systems need teams of capable, motivated professionals across both clinical and non-clinical roles.
If health system leaders overlook critical areas of performance like supply chain, procurement, and customer service, they risk undermining clinical outcomes, financial performance, and the well-being of their workforce.
The urgent need to better support healthcare operations was the main theme of the symplr Healthcare Operations Summit, held in partnership with Becker’s. The event brought together C-suite leaders and healthcare operations professionals, along with HR, clinical, and IT leaders, to explore how health systems can leverage technology to optimize healthcare operations.
Insights from the event are summarized below.
The ‘glue’ under pressure
During the summit, BJ Schaknowski, CEO of symplr, defined healthcare operations as the many non-clinical workflows needed to run a health system, hospital, or facility. This includes credentialing, scheduling, managing vendors and contracts, spend management, quality and safety, compliance, scheduling, and more. Without operations — and the cross-functional teams that drive them — healthcare delivery would halt.
“Operations really is the glue,” said Susan Grant, DNP, RN, chief clinical officer at symplr. “They’re the processes to ensure we have the right people with the right skills at the right time with the right tools to yield the outcomes we’re trying to achieve.”
In a survey of healthcare leaders conducted by symplr before the summit, respondents expressed tremendous uncertainty, citing increased supply chain costs related to tariffs and cuts in Medicaid and NIH funding, which could have a ripple effect.
Representing a small breakout group during the summit, Terri Hanlon-Bremer, MSN, RN, executive vice president and system COO at Cincinnati-based TriHealth, confirmed agreement among the group that the top operational challenges center on financial pressures. Anticipated funding cuts are forcing operational leaders to plan for various scenarios and proactively tighten their belts.
After financial pressures, Ms. Hanlon-Bremer said the group highlighted fragmented processes and technology, as well as workforce shortages, as particularly challenging right now. She also expressed concern about a lack of resources and expertise related to legal and regulatory concerns.
Operational tech has been neglected
Amy Olson, group vice president, business applications for Charlotte, N.C.-based Advocate Health, recounted that over the past few decades, healthcare organizations have made major investments in enterprise resource planning systems and electronic health records, as well as revenue cycle management platforms. However, “We’ve never had the opportunity to get to the rest of [what we need],” she said. “The tech has been ‘good enough’ . . . but it is not getting us where we need to go.”
Mr. Schaknowski added, “When it comes to operations technologies, it has been this highly fragmented and disparate area.”
Not only is point solution sprawl a problem, but there are growing questions about whether some point solutions deliver value. “Our job is looking at expense management,” said Phil Hampton, chief supply chain officer at Albuquerque, N.M.-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services. “And we’ve continued to see that expense [for technology] grow and grow.” This is causing Mr. Hampton to ask, “What’s the value we’re seeing out of that investment?”
Better operations through better data and decisions
To improve decision-making and achieve greater efficiency, operational leaders have long been on a quest for meaningful data-driven insights. These leaders crave answers to several critical questions, such as: What is our real margin? How is our financial performance affected by the cost of devices? What is our total cost of care by doctor, by procedure? For operational leaders, the volume of data is not the issue — it is the quality of the insights (undermined by data silos) that has been lacking. This lack of integrated data has limited the ability of operations leaders to make the kinds of decisions that can improve clinical care and financial performance.
Financial, operational, and supply chain leaders all care about the same thing as their clinical colleagues — they want to deliver the best care possible. They also want to achieve quality outcomes in a fiscally responsible manner because achieving financial health allows healthcare organizations to continue to provide care to their communities. Positive margins are required to sustain operations, and understanding where money is being made and lost is an important part of the care equation.
Operations and consumerism collide
Taylor Hamilton, chief consumer officer at Johnson City, Tenn.-based Ballad Health, described ways operational technologies can be used to help organizations improve the consumer experience while simplifying back-end operations. “I want us to create an experience where it is easy to access healthcare.
”Ballad Health has embraced a proactive and patient-centered approach by launching an automated real-time feedback system. After every appointment or hospital discharge, patients promptly receive a text message asking, “How was your care today?” This initiative ensures that patient voices are heard instantly, allowing the organization to celebrate successes and address concerns without delay.
Ms. Hamilton highlights the value of this system: “We’re able to see what people are experiencing—both the good and the areas needing improvement—right as it happens.” By responding to every piece of feedback, whether positive or constructive, Ballad demonstrates its commitment to continuous improvement and patient satisfaction.
Ballad is entering these thousands of comments into large language models, which detect themes. This is driving further action and operational improvement.
A platform approach can empower leaders
To support more seamless, effective health system operations, symplr created a platform that provides a centralized, scalable, cloud-based model and ecosystem of services to enable health system teams to more efficiently manage all aspects of operations.
The symplr Operations Platform brings together multiple solutions that operations leaders and team members need to run their organizations more efficiently. “We take care of all the stuff that you don’t want to think about,” Mr. Schaknowski said. “All those critical non-clinical workflows.”
The ways in which the symplr Operations Platform takes care of these non-clinical workflows include integrating data into a common platform, interoperability, a universal look and feel, automation, and application of AI.
“It is creating new value that people hadn’t thought of before,” Mr. Schaknowski added.
Mr. Hampton believes the symplr platform will help his team analyze investment decisions, measure performance, and achieve the organization’s intended “outcomes.”
“When I say ‘outcomes,’ it’s not always a financial outcome,” he said. “Sometimes we’re solving for a regulatory issue; sometimes we’re solving for a clinical issue. [Whatever we’re solving for], it needs to be measured.”
A scalable technology platform that automates, simplifies, connects, and integrates data can optimize operations and put health systems on the path toward realizing total cost of care, financial sustainability, and clinical excellence — allowing all parts of a health system to focus on what matters most: patient care.
The hidden engine
In today’s economic climate, controlling healthcare costs is more urgent than ever, and it can’t come at the expense of patient care. Technologies like predictive analytics and machine learning are helping to identify and manage costs more effectively. By consolidating onto smarter platforms, healthcare organizations can reduce expenses, streamline operations, and return valuable time back to caregivers. Nurses didn’t enter the profession to do data entry; they came to care for patients. And behind every efficient system and empowered caregiver is a team of operational and administrative leaders — the hidden engine quietly driving healthcare forward.
To learn more about symplr, visit www.symplr.com.
