Healthcare organizations have long had a triple aim: reducing the cost of care, improving the experience of care, and improving health outcomes.
And they’re making key strides, thanks to software as a service (SaaS). According to the KPMG and HFS Research Cloud Adoption Survey 2023opens in a new tab, cloud platforms are helping both providers and payers to:
- Reduce costs — by avoiding capital-intensive investments for on-premises software.
- Improve patients’ experience — by enabling them to access services through digital channels that are fast, secure, and resilient.
- Improve health outcomes — by enhancing interoperability, standardization, and data integration. SaaS is helping to enable a 360-degree view of each patient, so clinicians can access accurate information, provide better treatments, and collaborate more efficiently.
However, for healthcare organizations to realize these kinds of benefits, it’s not enough to just move systems to the cloud. SaaS platforms also need continued nurturing after implementation, because innovation doesn’t stand still.
Indeed, SaaS providers regularly release new functionality through software updates, and this functionality enables continual evolution for considerations like data management, security, collaboration, and user experience. But too often, healthcare companies struggle to implement these updates because they can’t manage the impact—in terms of testing, configuration, training, process changes, and more.
In fact, in the recent survey, healthcare providers and payers said their top barriers to adopting new functionality are (1) technical knowledge and (2) time for testing new features.
That’s why forward-looking healthcare organizations are using managed services for the ongoing optimization of their SaaS platforms. That includes evaluating and deploying new functionality as it’s released—along with configuration changes, enhancements, data integrations, customizations, knowledge management, and other improvements as required by the business.
Leading managed services providers bring the deep SaaS expertise and capacity that buyers lack, plus robust consulting capabilities in the healthcare industry—across different business functions and processes.
SaaS is an enabler of healthcare transformation. And with the right kind of strategic collaboration, organizations can turn their triple aim into a triple reality.
Learn more about KPMG Managed Services.
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David J. Brown
Global Head, Managed Services, KPMG International and Principal, Advisory,
KPMG in the U.S.
