Provider organizations are in the middle of a workforce crisis, and leaders are turning to digital health solutions to address workforce challenges like administrative burden, clinician burnout, and widespread shortages. Providers want, and need, to partner with vendors for these solutions but have expressed that it’s hard to find the right partner.  They’re overwhelmed by the availability and diversity in vendors and often struggle to find the right tool for their specific goals. Vendors have an opportunity earn new business and expand existing partnerships if they can clearly articulate how their solution can support provider organizations. 

Leaders, especially technology leaders, get hundreds of emails a day from prospective vendors. Oftentimes, the emails are written for a mass audience and promote solutions that solve problems providers don’t have or aren’t prioritizing right now. Providers simply don’t have the time to go through each proposal and think about how that solution could solve their existing challenges. This most often results in providers forgoing a vendor partner altogether as they are overwhelmed with choices. Even when providers do choose to invest, it is more likely to be an unsuitable investment that doesn’t meet their needs or lead to a long-term partnership.

Workforce challenges are the top priority for most provider organizations right now. Because of this, vendors would benefit from articulating how their solution addresses a workforce challenge and supports the workforce.

Here are some common workforce challenges that provider organizations face and are seeking solutions to solve:
 

• High rates of administrative burden: Clinician responsibilities have expanded to include many repetitive, non-clinical tasks that take time away from seeing patients. Tasks like prior authorizations and submitting payment claims prevent clinicians from working at top-of-license. This leads to a dissatisfied workforce without fully utilizing their expertise.
• Making sense out of large amounts of data: Advanced tools help organizations to document increasing amounts of complex patient information. Clinicians struggle to recall and interpret all that data to inform medical decisions. This leads to cognitive burden and inefficiencies among the workforce.
• Inaccessibility of care: Even when clinicians have the tools and skills to treat complex conditions, they lack the capacity to deliver care when and where it works for patients. There aren’t enough clinicians in the workforce and the most in-demand specialties are spread the thinnest which drives turnover and burnout.
• Experience complexity gap: Clinicians that newly join the workforce need mentors and experience to build their skills. Due to shortages from a smaller pipeline of new clinicians and those who’ve left the workforce, new clinicians are forced to deal with highly complex patients early in their careers and don’t have tenured peers to guide their growth.

Provider leaders tend to be risk adverse because they’re operating in an environment with narrow margins and a workforce that has gone through a lot of change. They don’t want to spend precious resources on a solution without absolute certainty that the solution will benefit the organization. Because of that, providers focus on the upfront cost of new solutions over the eventual return on investment (ROI). The focus on upfront costs is even greater for technology solutions since many of them are relatively new without clear returns.

Vendors can help providers overcome their focus on costs by helping them see how — and when — the benefits will outweigh the costs. Of course, it takes time to see real change from a new solution, and that makes it even harder for providers to justify investment. To overcome this challenge, vendors should also show the short-term “wins” associated with their solutions. It’s easier for providers to secure initial interest among all leaders and commit when they see that their money will start working for them earlier.

Here are some examples of both short- and long-term benefits that providers are looking for.

Short-term benefits: These tend to be more frequently tracked data points. Improvements in these areas are expected within 1-3 years post-implementation of a solution.

• Decreased turnover rates
• Decreased gaps in staffing
• Time saved for clinicians
• Decreased resource utilization

Long-term benefits: These metrics may be more challenging to measure and often require more time for changes to be observed but are just as crucial to solving the workforce crisis. Improvements typically come between 3- and 5-years post-implementation of a solution.

• Increased clinician and patient satisfaction
• Decreased labor costs
• Increased care quality
• Top-of-license practice

It’s not enough to just promise these returns. Once a partnership is established, it is critical to use key performance indicators (KPIs) to demonstrate the results and show providers the value in a solution. This helps providers continue investment in the solution and supports a long-lasting relationship between vendors and providers. 

Not all leaders in provider organizations are the same, although it can be tempting to treat them as such.  Leadership have varying priorities depending on their specific roles. For example, the priorities of a CNO won’t be the same for a CFO. Marketing to all leaders using the same approach without accounting for these different goals will make it hard for vendors to connect to any leader effectively.

Since C-suite level executives are the main decision makers, vendors should tailor their messaging depending on who they’re talking to and what their goals are.

Here are some performance areas that resonate with different leaders in the c-suite:

Financial leaders (CFOs):

• Lower upfront costs
• Increase short-term returns to justify purchasing
• Improve impact of investment on bottom line

Clinical leaders (CMO, CNO):

• Reduce rates of burnout
• Improve clinician satisfaction
• Improve care quality through reduced readmission rates and lengths of stay
• Maximize clinician capabilities through alternative care models (e.g., virtual nursing)

Workforce leaders (CHRO):

• Increase rates of retention
• Decrease turnover
• Improve productivity among workforce
• Enable top-of-license care

Technology leaders (CTO, CDO, CIO):

• Increase automation within workflows
• Upgrade infrastructure to support new technology
• Improve staff training for digital tools
• Enable integration with EHR and other existing systems

Vendors should also look beyond the c-suite to include the end-users who have important insights into organizational needs in early conversations. These end-users, like bedside clinicians, have frontline knowledge of how issues manifest in the day-to-day. However, these perspectives are often included too late in the decision-making process to be useful, if they’re included at all. Including end-users early and often in decision-making will lead to a better reception among staff and faster results when choosing and implementing a new solution.