The landscape of care is rapidly shifting, spurred by COVID-19 and digital disruptors entering the marketplace. Digital is no longer optional for health systems that want to thrive in the new normal, and creating an organization-wide digital transformation strategy is the best way to ensure a successful, long-lasting digital program.

Two AVIA Members, The University of Kansas Health System and Silver Cross Hospital, have committed to digital playing a central role in their organizations’ path forward through an organization-wide digital transformation strategy.

Driving digital enablement at The University of Kansas Health System 

Before becoming an AVIA Member, The University of Kansas Health System was well established as a successful, industry-leading health system with a strong focus and top performance on quality, patient safety, and its people. However, they knew in order to stay competitive in a world with changing consumer expectations, they had to pivot to make digital a core part of their operating model. The health system partnered with AVIA to kickstart the strategy creation, which involved meeting with senior leadership to gain buy-in, conducting a current state analysis, and identifying the top areas of focus for the digital strategy they call “Digital Enablement”. 

To help them shift from “doing digital” to “being digital,” The University of Kansas Health System gathered a diverse group of leaders from across the organization to own their digital efforts, purposefully shying away from the “Chief Digital Officer” model. Instead, they created a Digital Strategy Executive Committee to lead digital initiative rollouts, staffed by stakeholders from the ambulatory, marketing, IT, inpatient, strategy, and periops departments. This multi-stakeholder model helps them elevate the discussion from one particular solution to a broader platform focus on improving the way they serve patients. 

“We would not be where we are today without AVIA’s help. They were a significant asset for us to culturally grasp the significance of what we were digitally trying to do,” says Chris Wilson, Vice President of System Integration and Innovation at The University of Kansas Health System. “Having a partner in the space who fundamentally believes in the power of digital like we do has been hugely helpful in many of our executive leadership conversations.” 

Throughout the span of their digital transformation strategy rollout in partnership with AVIA, the health system’s committee has successfully introduced a range of digital solutions to better serve their patient population. These digital initiatives include virtual visits, appointment reminders, bidirectional texting, on-demand care, provider search & directory, clinical decision making, wayfinding, and virtual triage. 

This strategy produced positive results in KPIs across the board. Compared to last year, The University of Kansas Health System saw a 135% increase in telehealth visits, a doubling of the percent of virtual visits to 12.5%, a 750%+ increase in online scheduling, a 40% increase in the MyChart user base, a 75% increase in MyChart messages, a decrease from 5.34% to 3.73% of appointment no-shows, and a doubling of total digital interactions with patients exceeding $1.2M this fiscal year.  

Innovating through COVID-19 at Silver Cross Hospital

When Silver Cross Hospital, based in Illinois, became an AVIA Member and owner, they were quickly inspired by AVIA experts and the Member Network to start building an organization-wide digital transformation strategy. A current state assessment and competitive analysis helped them identify their areas of focus, benchmarked against leading health systems. Based on these findings, Silver Cross Hospital worked with AVIA to create a two-year digital transformation strategy. 

“The digital transformation strategy was instrumental in giving us a way to think and talk about digital and present it to our board and leadership, says Mary Bakken, COO of Silver Cross Hospital. “We felt more confident in how we implemented the plan and evaluated ourselves because we had experts from AVIA working with us.”

The hospital had just started rolling out their digital transformation strategy when COVID-19 hit their community. Because they already had a digital strategy in place, they were able to rapidly release two digital solutions despite the pandemic. One asynchronous virtual visit solution was launched in 15 days to meet surging market needs. While the pandemic was an obstacle, it also created a call-to-action for certain elements of their plan that they were able to nimbly implement. 

Bakken has four pieces of advice for health systems looking to create a digital transformation strategy:

• Keep the customer journey at top of mind: Be very clear about what the customer journey will be when they interact with digital, says Bakken. Use this journey to help define how the different puzzle pieces of digital will fit together to provide the overarching experience you want to give to consumers. 
• Build on a realistic timeline: When it comes to digital strategy, Bakken recommends not planning more than two to three years in advance. Digital is a rapidly innovating field, and the landscape is likely to be very different in five to ten years. 

• Ensure you have leadership buy-in: Bakken highlights the importance of having the support and buy-in of several members of the C-suite to execute on a digital transformation strategy properly. Silver Cross Hospital had support from the CEO, CNO, CFO, and CIO, and that leadership from the executive team helped shift digital from an add-on to a core operational strategy.   
• Don’t skip over change management: Once the digital transformation strategy is in place, Bakken advises health systems to not skip over the importance of change management and providing support and adoption techniques to front-line staff to encourage usage of the tool. 

An organization-wide digital transformation strategy is essential for your health system’s continued success, as evidenced by The University of Kansas Health System’s and Silver Cross’ stories. Read more and discover AVIA’s tried-and-true three-step process for driving digital success in our latest white paper, Healthcare Digitized: Building a Digital Transformation Strategy at Your Health System.