Health Cloud is more than just CRM. It integrates the power of cloud technology to create an environment that uses specific healthcare terminology to enable everyone in the patient journey—from
healthcare team members to patients to payers—all can access critical information at any time accurately and efficiently.
It supports one-to-one relationship management through a patient profile that integrates information from multiple data sources, including electronic medical records (EMRs), medical devices and wearables. A component of the system, Private Communities, enables secure collaboration among members of the caregiver network. Through Private Communities, patients can view care plans, connect with health providers, find answers to common questions and fill out forms in advance of visits to save time.
Health Cloud is among an increasing number of platforms that support a more engaged and tech-savvy patient base. Healthcare organizations are using electronic health record (EHR) platforms to manage their patient records.
It is an experience platform for healthcare and life sciences organizations. A few of Salesforce Health Cloud’s many applications include appointment management, benefits & eligibility verification, medication management, care coordination, call triage, clinical study management, prior authorization, and home care management.
Is Health Cloud the right fit for you?
Digital transformation is now center stage and is core to business strategies. Health Cloud provides a platform to overlay a digital layer in sales and service operations to transform how patients and other stakeholders are engaged. It also provides a more powerful approach to capturing data about those interactions for continuous improvement. The flexibility of the platform allows it to serve organizations of all sizes, from the early-stage company to global operations spanning multiple continents.
What Are the Benefits of Health Cloud
The first thing we need to understand, it’s not EHR versus CRM — it’s EHR and CRM. Health Cloud isn’t here to replace your EHR. It enables you to unlock legacy systems and incorporate apps in a compliant, flexible platform, turning insights into action for a patient-centered approach to care. The Forrester Wave has also recognized Salesforce as a leader in healthcare CRM for providers.
Benefits for providers
Beyond elevating your EHR, Health Cloud for providers more specifically offers:
- A 360-degree view of patient data, including up-to-the-minute details such as current conditions, appointment history, medications, and specialists… all in one place, without having to change screens or swap devices
- A complete patient experience — the ability to create a customized care plan and make connections in caregiver networks
- Real-time patient coordination and engagement with the help of private Salesforce Communities, which allow patients and caregivers to send and receive secure messages anytime
Benefits for payers
Health Cloud has features specific to the health insurance industry that enable payers to engage with members and providers in more proactive, efficient ways, such as:
- Member care management programs at scale through smart utilization management, proactive risk identification, and real-time integration with legacy systems and EHRs to get a 360-degree view of members.
- Personalized member services. With a complete picture of members, agents can deliver more personalized interactions and proactive support through intelligent recommendations. A knowledge base keeps agents connected and empowered with real-time information about members for faster, more detailed support and case resolution.
- Management of the complete member journey. Omnichannel communications, automated workflows, and pre-built templates make it possible to engage members at key points in their journey — from acquisition and onboarding through retention.
Benefits for biotech/pharma companies
Health Cloud is the foundation of many patient support programs for large and small biotech and pharma companies. By creating a centralized system that can collect HCP script information, patient opt-ins, patient information, and track fulfillment, biotech and pharma companies can keep operational
costs down and deliver better results for patients. Health Cloud enables biotech and pharma companies to:
- Scale and streamline compliance and adherence. With the ability to get patients their medicine more efficiently through shepherding prior authorizations, patient sign-ups, and fulfillment tracking. These steps serve as the launching point to scale therapy-specific support programs so that teams can reduce operational costs while providing the best opportunity for patients to receive positive health outcomes.
- Personalize the patient and HCP experience. Health Cloud helps biotech and pharma companies meet patients and HCPs where they are — across their preferred devices in real-time. Through individual case management capabilities with any point of access by patients (e.g., phone, web, mobile), companies are able to have an immediate understanding of where a patient is in the journey at any given time, as well as be able to personalize their needs.
- Collect and analyze critical product and process information in a compliant manner. Health Cloud makes it easy to collect information directly from patients or their HCP regarding script approval, prior authorizations, adverse events or product complaint information, which can be analyzed easily for reporting purposes. Additionally, it is flexible enough to customize guided program enrollment and digital consent management driven by your unique business rules.
Benefits for medical devices companies
For medical devices companies concerned with building provider relationships, managing commercial processes, and supporting the patient experience, Health Cloud helps to:
- Engage and empower sales and account teams with the centralized data, task automation, and immediate insights they need on any device. Integrate sales forecasts into agreements, provide visibility into agreement terms, and surface actual volume and revenue with real-time analysis and insights.
- Enable and leverage account-based forecasting with Einstein Analytics-driven forecast models at corporate and provider level by market, geography, and product line; collaboration with product, finance, and sales teams; and sales target setting based on market forecasting.
- Increase positive experience and outcomes for patients through optimized, personalized patient programs — beginning with guided program enrollment, digital consent management, and omnichannel communications that put patients in control of their care journey.
Where real-world healthcare experience meets Salesforce Health Cloud expertise
With Salesforce Health Cloud, providers can give patients, caregivers, and their staff members more immediate, streamlined access to key information. It gives patients more autonomy over their own healthcare journeys, while also helping those aiding in their care deliver more personalized, efficient care.
Salesforce Health Cloud
“Health Cloud” from Salesforce is a product that you may have heard about a number of times over the years. But you may only have a vague notion of what it can do.
Salesforce Health Cloud has continued to be the main branding for healthcare and life sciences applications.
Today, Health Cloud can be viewed as bundles of functionality that can be applied to a wide range of use cases for providers, payers, pharmaceuticals, and medical device companies—all ultimately relating to patients. The 360-degree view of the customer within corporations has been translated to the 360- degree view of the patient in healthcare.
In fact, you can expect to see 360 Degrees of Healthcare referenced frequently by Salesforce moving forward.
As Salesforce puts it, “Salesforce reimagined as a healthcare CRM seamlessly connects systems of record and improves visibility into the entire health journey, enabling personalized interactions that strengthen relationships and build trust with customers, whether they’re patients, members, providers, or partners.”It’s worth mentioning that Health Cloud is not a replacement for an EHR system, but it can be integrated with an EHR using FHIR standards.
A Platform, Health Cloud, and a Partner Ecosystem
The user and patient experience is the visible part on top of three underlying layers.
As an example of core functionality, Salesforce developed and has iterated a sophisticated Flow Builder that allows organizations to create and adhere to standardized processes. One way this is applied to the Health Cloud layer is within Care Plans. With Care Plans, standardized carecan be provided for patients with similar conditions. It becomes easier to identify care gaps. For each Care Plan, a series of tasks, designed to move a patient toward a goal, can be set up and followed.
A multi-level information security model — referred to as “who sees what” — ensures that each user of the system only has access to patient data that they need. It’s becoming more common to see Salesforce Experience Cloud coupled with Health Cloud. There are many use cases for creating patient experiences on the Salesforce platform. Salesforce Health Cloud is ever-evolving. Both Salesforce and its large partner ecosystem have been
continually adding new capabilities—both as prepackaged apps and as custom solutions.
In terms of prepackaged functionality, a keyword search for “healthcare” on the Salesforce AppExchange reveals over 150 third-party apps with at least some connection to healthcare.
In many cases, prepackaged functionality can be further customized for the precise needs of a healthcare or life sciences organization. When there isn’t anything available off-the-shelf to address a specific business requirement, a Health Cloud customer or a Salesforce Health Cloud consulting partner
can develop fully custom functionality using Salesforce-provided declarative (no code) tools and coding tools.
What’s Next for Health Cloud?
Enhancing the patient experience has been a growing area of focus over the last several years for Salesforce, members of its ecosystem, and its customers. You can expect to see many new creative, patient-centric solutions within healthcare & life sciences for years to come.
