Rising COVID-19 cases. Falling COVID-19 cases. Effective, safe vaccines! Healthcare worker burnout. The most digital health funding – ever. Health equity in the spotlight. The Delta variant. The Omicron variant. The staying power of virtual care and hospital at home. Shifting consumer expectations for healthcare. And, underlying it all, a testament to the power of collaboration and the potential of digital to transform the industry.

2021 has been a wild ride, but one that has the tone for the years to come. No longer can health systems afford to ignore digital innovation, or keep their health equity efforts on the backburner. COVID-19 caused such a profound shift in the way that we provide care, and we’ll continue to see a reimagining of care in 2022 and beyond. Before we move forward in the new year, we are taking a look back at some of our top insights from our Centers in 2021.

Center for Consumerism

• The rise of digital natives: How millennials and Gen Z are transforming healthcare: In the new world spearheaded by millennials and Gen Z, health systems must change how they’re communicating with, attracting, and caring for these younger generations.
• Consumer interactions: Improve the patient experience in healthcare with text and chat: As health systems expand their consumer interactions strategy, the potential value and opportunity is immense.
• Get personal: Building a hyper-personalized care strategy: To emerge as leaders in the industry, more health systems have been leaning into hyper-personalized care enabled by digital to drive growth and enhance the patient experience.
• Ambulatory Care: Current Landscape & Challenges: AVIA interviewed 10 health systems across the U.S., including academic medical centers, integrated delivery networks, and regional health systems in rural and urban markets. The conversations provided a unique understanding of the challenges facing ambulatory care networks and the emerging role of digital now and beyond the pandemic. 

Center for Care Transformation 

• How Community Resource Referral Platforms Improve Health Equity: Health systems must leverage digital to accelerate their reputation as a community asset, address growing social and behavioral health needs, and protect their margins. 
• Health Equity in the Spotlight: A Conversation with HonorHealth and ChristianaCare: What can health systems do to combat inequities? AVIA’s webinar, Health Equity in the Spotlight: A Conversation with HonorHealth and ChristianaCare, explores how digital can help your health system begin to address health inequities that exist in your community.

• Hospital at Home: Q&A with Dr. Gregory Goodman from Brigham & Women’s Hospital: Home Hospital Attending Dr. Gregory Goodman and his peers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston are pioneers in this space. AVIA spoke with Dr. Goodman about what it takes to build a successful hospital at home program, why it matters, and how hospital at home is redefining the future of care.

Center for Operational Transformation 

• 7 digital solutions to transform your health system’s clinical operations [Part 1] and [Part 2]: Health systems can make an immediate and powerful impact on provider and patient experience, patient outcomes, quality of care, and their bottom line by focusing on coding and clinical documentation integrity, computer-assisted physician documentation, predictive staffing, and access and orchestration, among other solutions. 
• Building a financial safety net: 4 key digital solutions to optimize the patient financial journey: Reimagining the revenue cycle and patient financial journey supported by digital can be daunting. To streamline their efforts, AVIA recommends that health systems focus on four key areas of the patient financial journey where digital has been proven to make an outsized financial impact.

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