As healthcare increasingly goes digital, hospital leaders who oversee finances have had to adapt to a changing industry.
Doug Vanderslice, senior vice president and chief financial officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, said in an interview with Forbes that the facility is in the midst of a multi-year upgrade of its administrative infrastructure and that a digital transformation allows for better management of staff.
Healthcare is a “people-oriented service,” he said, so more advanced technologies allow for organizations to better manage employees. Standardization, and the fact that more healthcare workers are accepting of it, makes it easier to optimize processes like human resources and better match people to volume, Vanderslice said.
One of the most exciting changes brought on by evolving technology, he noted in the article, is the ability to care for patients who have conditions that in the past were difficult to treat. The advent of precision medicine has allowed for more personalized treatment options for patients who have complex conditions, and telehealth programs open the door for better care access to patients who may previously have been hard to reach, like those in remote or rural regions.
Telemedicine has also allowed hospitals, like Banner Health, to cut costs and hospitalizations.