Salesforce Health Cloud Guide

Salesforce Health Cloud is arguably the most robust CRM ever built for healthcare. It is the ideal patient management software, allowing for more personalized connections, collaboration across health teams, integration with EHRs, and more. But for those first getting started on the platform, the amount of information and pure power can be daunting. Don’t fear – we’ve captured the highlights for you, including core capabilities and key terms, to help you hit the ground running

Salesforce Health Cloud: The 30-second overview

What exactly is Health Cloud? In a nutshell, it builds and expands upon all of the core features of the Salesforce CRM with capabilities and features designed exclusively around the needs of patients, healthcare providers, and payers.

It gives healthcare professionals the tools they need to collaborate efficiently. It also helps care team members understand patients better so they can provide truly personalized medicine. It even provides essential functionality for payers and insurance companies.

Now that you have the 30-second overview, let’s dive into some ways Salesforce Health Cloud can help improve the patient and provider experience in your healthcare organization.

Salesforce Health Cloud Specific Terminology

Having a basic understanding of Health Cloud terminology will help you navigate the platform with ease. Here are some need-to-know terms you’ll master in no time:

• Care Team. Think doctors, nurses, medical assistants, health navigators, even administrative professionals. The care team is made up of people who interact with the patient at some, and sometimes many, points of his or her journey. In Salesforce Health Cloud, Care Team may also be referred to as a Case Team, because they have access to the patient case.
• Provider. Providers are a subset of the care team. These are the people or companies that perform the healthcare service, such as a doctor or the health system in which she works.
• Payer. Payers handle financial and operational aspects of providing healthcare. Most often payers are insurers or provider networks.
• EHR. The electronic health registry, which holds a patient’s electronic health record.
• HL7. Health Level Seven International, or HL7, is a standards-development organization. They create the HL7 Standards, which are formats and definitions developed specifically for the medical industry. They are used for sharing and developing electronic health records (EHRs).

Here’s how all those terms come together in a Penrod Salesforce Health Cloud Implementation

Salesforce Health Cloud Core Capabilities

As we noted, Health Cloud does a lot and does it well – patient records, care providers, payer information, even surveys. But really, it boils down to four core capabilities:

• Health Cloud brings together data from legacy systems of records and electronic health registries (EHRs). It’s not a question of EHR vs CRM…it’s CRM + EHR. Health Cloud provides the right data model to bring information, including patient records, from external systems into one centralized platform. With its innovative 360-degree patient view, you can streamline processes and help enable coordinated care.
• Health Cloud gives healthcare professionals the tools they need to collaborate more efficiently. Patients today interact with multiple people along their healthcare journey, from schedulers to nurses to doctors. Depending on their health needs and goals, they may have a primary care physician, as well as a team of specialists, such as a cardiologist or dietician.

Salesforce Health Cloud provides the entire care team one central platform where they can provide collaborative care. By having this holistic view of the patient and his or her health journey, the team can coordinate care plans seamlessly together to promote optimal outcomes.

• Health Cloud helps care teams build 1-to-1 relationships across entire care journeys. People generally go to the doctor because they want to get well or stay well. For some people, the journey to health is a long one. That’s why it’s so important to establish trusted relationships with patients. Salesforce Health Cloud helps facilitate this by allowing all members of the care team to capture important notes and milestones, as well as medical information. This helps all members of the care team, from scheduler to specialist, provide truly personalized care.
• Health Cloud provides essential functionality for payers. That’s right, Salesforce Health Cloud isn’t just for providers! It allows insurance companies and payers to view a patient’s available coverage, in-network, and out-of-network costs. Since health insurance is so tightly affiliated with healthcare, this is a big win across the board, creating efficiencies for patients, providers, and payers.

Salesforce Health Cloud Key Feature Sets

In addition to core capabilities and key terms, having a handle on select feature sets within Salesforce Health Cloud can help you level up your patient management game. Here are some features we love:

Data Privacy, Protection, and Integration

Salesforce Shield is the trusted trio of security tools that help admins and developers build security into business-critical apps. The trio includes Shield Platform Encryption, Event Monitoring, and Field Audit Trail. With this, users and patients can know that their personal health information is secure. This information can also integrate with the patient’s electronic health record, providing easy access to help them stay engaged in their care.

360-Degree Patient View

Salesforce Health Cloud offers a unique 360-degree view of the patient, which includes a patient profile, health records, timeline view, and treatment plans. This eliminates the hassle of toggling between screens and platforms and allows teams to spend more time helping patients. 

Care Team Productivity

Care teams are continually tasked with doing more in less time, while still offering a high level of care. Health Cloud helps lighten this load by offering innovative applications. One example is household mappings, which allow you to manage a view of all households a patient belongs to, gaining more insight into their home life, needs, and goals.

Another is the ability to take assessments using Salesforce Surveys. This allows providers to gauge their own performance and see if they are meeting patient’s expectations.

Penrod’s Final Take
Whether you’re thinking of dipping your toes into the Salesforce ecosystem or have jumped in headfirst, knowing Salesforce Health Cloud’s capabilities, terminology, and feature sets will help you navigate the platform smoothly. In no time, you’ll be able to manage complex patient information while also personalizing the patient experience from the very start, all within one innovative platform.

Now that you know the basics, read this to see if Salesforce Health Cloud is right for your implementation.