Adopting Banking Policies in Healthcare

Healthcare management boards make sure that teams run efficiently and are cost-effective. These teams manage aspects that directly influence the business side of health care. For example, data management influences healthcare management and finance.

The banking industry can teach healthcare management many things about data management. Taking care of people is at the core of the healthcare industry, but to do that, organizations have to develop strong relationships with patients. One of the activities that healthcare organizations must perform to improve patient experience is automation, and by extension, data handling.

While healthcare records have made data management more efficient and organized, some healthcare organizations still have issues in a few areas. These issues interfere with patients’ convenient access to information and their overall experience. Some of the pressing issues healthcare organizations face are inconsistent platforms that are obstacles for information sharing, jealously guarding patient information for fear of competition, and interoperability issues stemming from a fragmented reimbursement system.

Information sharing in the financial services industry, including banks, has evolved considerably since the 1970s. With the adoption of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) messaging system in the late 1970s, information sharing became more organized. SWIFT provides financial institutions with secure and fast transmitting instructions for payments and other transactions, relying on a standardized system of codes and structured methods. The system delivers over 34 million messages daily.

SWIFT illustrates how this interoperability (interconnectivity of healthcare platforms) could be implemented within the healthcare industry. While healthcare information is more complicated than banking data, it is possible to focus on key areas of interoperability as it relates to managing data.

Shared information typically includes billing, clinical research, patient care, and public health. This data comes in various formats, such as images, tracings, and free-text comments. In the beginning, healthcare organizations could develop a system for notifying care teams when a patient receives care services, which ensures everyone knows the patient’s history.

SWIFT works practically in banking by giving financial institutions the power to debit and credit accounts quickly. SWIFT also allows banks to establish policies in clearing transactions and crediting accounts.

This interoperability that banking has adopted is most needed in the increasingly adopted value-based system. In this system, providers are rewarded for high-quality healthcare, lower costs, and improved patient health outcomes. Because healthcare providers risk losing money, the providers must know everything about the patients’ health history. This requires the same type of interoperability in information sharing among healthcare organizations. The broad-scale adoption of the SWIFT system happened because various entities across the industry advocated for implementing this type of data sharing.

Since its inception, the financial services industry consistently establishes transaction standards and costs and addresses regulatory and legal barriers, among other functions. In the same way, healthcare must create a system that the industry supports and regulates. According to Harvard Business Review, this can happen with the launch of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE), an office designed to create technical, legal, and business offices and agreements to advance interoperability within the healthcare industry.