How can healthcare providers deliver a personalized experience to patients while respecting HIPAA?

With 80% of customers now agreeing that experience is as important as products and services, and 91% of customers saying good customer service leads to repeat purchasing (Salesforce State of Service, 4th edition report), customer experience is truly the battleground on which brands live or die.

Underpinning it all is data. But what if standing between you and unlocking all that data for CX is a mountain of regulations, like those faced by the Healthcare Industry?

If you want to compete in a tough market, you get really good tools— and the processes to back them up. 

With Tealium and our strategic partners, Healthcare brands have the right tools to use data to create the same sophisticated, personalized patient experiences as seen with leading consumer brands, without the regulatory risk. Tealium’s deployment options (Tealium will sign a BAA with each of these options) give healthcare companies access to the latest CDP technology, while following HIPAA guidelines:

  • Private Cloud – The highest level of security available, for companies that require single tenancy and a fully attested environment for HIPAA compliance
  • NEW! HIPAA Multi-tenant Deployment – For companies that would like HIPAA compliance, but do not require single tenancy, this provides a more cost-effective option

Our HIPAA covered environments add extra technical and organizational measures (TOMs) on top of the same controls in our Public Cloud that enable us to confidently sign a BAA with our Private Cloud customers.  This is why we will only sign a BAA with the new HIPAA Multi-Tenant or Private Clouds and not the Public Cloud.  

Why Should Healthcare Organizations Figure Out How to Better Use Patient Data Now?

The huge shift over the past two years towards telehealth, remote monitoring, and overall digitization of the patient experience has highlighted which providers can personalize the patient experience effectively and which cannot. Digital-first businesses are disrupting the healthcare space, while incumbents compete fiercely to retain market share.  Since many data management tools are not HIPAA compliant (and therefore unable to store patient data), healthcare marketers and administrators are restricted in their ability to improve and personalize the experiences of patients and caregivers compared to other industries.

Other trends in the market also conspire to create urgency for healthcare companies to have a robust strategy for unlocking patient data:

  1. Care anywhere / Healthcare 2.0 — Massive initiative for traditional established healthcare companies battling incumbents. More than ever, providers need to digitally enable patients wherever they may be. Moving from doctor-centric models of engagement to patient-centric. 
  2. Building the health ecosystem — Health leaders are calling for fewer point solutions and more ecosystems built to treat patients proactively and holistically (we tie these point solutions together and help them build their ecosystem). 
  3. Human + machine — Organizations are increasingly calling for solutions that will allow them to intelligently automate action and insights to shift workers to more strategic activities.
  4. Health consumerism — Under increasing financial responsibility and overwhelming frustration, patients are demanding transparency and simplicity in their digital engagements to help navigate healthcare’s complexity. Patients and consumers desire the same experiences from their healthcare provider that they receive across other industries
  5. New capabilities for competition — New foundational capabilities with data are emerging as necessary to compete in today’s market to power new reimbursement models and patient-centered care.

How Can Tealium Help?

Tealium created the Customer Data Hub to collect customer data from any source, and break down the silos that are the status quo in Martech solutions that wreak havoc on customer experience. By unifying data around the customer, brands can better understand behavior and use that understanding to create truly differentiated experiences that grow patient lifetime value. It’s also important to work with other compliant technology (for example, Braze) and have the right strategy in place.

I was part of the 2015 team that sold the first HIPAA-compliant version of Tealium’s platform.  Our customer had an initiative to better personalize patient experiences across several lines of business (including a pharmacy), but the restrictions imposed by HIPAA made this impossible.  They summed up their initial concerns hypothetically by comparing the use of patient data for CX (which Tealium made possible) to “suggesting sweet snacks to a diabetic.”  

While the problem may have sounded minor at first, it was serious on many levels. The diabetic patient could suffer physical harm, just like their business could suffer harm from improperly managing patient data. The business could be sued for storing patient data inappropriately.  The results would be far worse than a poorly personalized marketing communication.  As someone involved in that first implementation, I’m excited to see how far we’ve come in the past 6 years in helping Healthcare providers create a stronger customer experience.

Tealium works with both services and technology partners to ensure that any business, including healthcare providers, can provide the optimal customer or patient experience.  The healthcare vertical has rapidly adopted Tealium since we created the first HIPAA-compliant CDP.  Tealium and our partners, such as Blast Analytics, have experience working with major healthcare brands to enable healthcare-specific strategies. Additionally, Tealium and our tech partners, like Braze, have built powerful solutions for some of the most recognizable brands in healthcare. 

Blast Analytics provides strategy and services for healthcare providers with Tealium’s HIPAA-compliant platform. Braze delivers HIPAA-compliant cross-channel messaging at scale. The result is deeper understanding of the patient from online to offline and a hyper personalized patient experience across all channels and touchpoints. 

Without a HIPAA-compliant CDP for healthcare providers to connect CX tools together, they suffer from delayed, siloed views of the patient and caregiver, leading to disconnected experiences. With Tealium’s new HIPAA-compliant solutions in place, the healthcare industry has improved its prognosis to meet compliance standards while providing a better customer experience.

Healthcare leaders can now legally build the most accurate real-time patient profiles with the help of Tealium, empowering marketing and IT leaders to realize ambitious digital transformation initiatives. This will continue to keep healthcare providers focused on their number one goal: providing their patients with the best possible experience.

Read more about how Tealium supports healthcare providers, and learn more about Tealium’s HIPAA compliant offering.  You can also request a demo to see AudienceStream, the first HIPAA compliant CDP in action

 

Post Author

Josh Wolf
As Tealium's Director of Partner Solutions Consulting, Josh works closely with hundreds of agencies, system integrators and Martech vendors. Josh and his partners help businesses better understand their customers and provide engaging, personalized experiences in every channel.

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