Since 2019, Rotech Healthcare, a national leader in providing ventilators, oxygen, sleep apnea treatment, wound care solutions, and home medical equipment, has been undergoing digital transformation (DX) to become completely paperless in order to improve operational efficiencies and service patients more effectively. We defined a roadmap and strategy for our digital transformation and executed that plan with a phased approach.
Rotech’s DX Journey
We started by digitizing our paper routes for our Patient Service Technicians, which enabled them to get accustomed to utilizing mobile devices for this process. Rotech then took on a much bigger initiative to build the technical architecture to fully support paperless mobility. We digitized our patient paperwork and developed a solution to securely facilitate that workflow on our mobile devices from the field back to our intake system.
To support these goals, we engaged MetTel to help source, configure, secure and deploy over 1,300 tablets with wireless connectivity. Rotech is utilizing tablets for front-end paperless mobility which provided a good foundation for the next phase of our transformation—transforming the patient experience. When the pandemic hit, we were already well underway in our DX journey, and our next phase of this solution was focusing on transforming the patient experience. We wanted a way to better provide our patients with secure access to their information and digital documents. We also wanted our patients to have more self-service capabilities. At the end of April 2020, we released our now popular Patient Portal.
To take it a step further, in November 2020 we released a mobile app to provide patients with secure, on-the-go access to their information and digital documents. This puts pertinent patient information at their fingertips.
Digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a change in culture, process and technology, but well worth it. Our patient portal and mobile app provide many value-add benefits to our patients, including a way to quickly communicate important information. For example, with the recent severe winter weather across many parts of the U.S., we were able to automate push notifications about potential delays with supply shipments to our patients.
5 Steps to DX Success
With our experience in mind, I offer these 5 steps to DX journey success:
- Decide on your business objective(s) first—start with the end goal in mind
- Plan and map your digital transformation to support your business objective(s); ensure you have strategic buy-in
- Choose a phased approach with more attainable goals early on to build momentum and confidence
- Identify in-house capabilities as well as select the best technology partners
- Execute on each phase of your solution and show quantifiable business results
The most important recommendation that is not on this list is to keep moving forward and striving for improvement. Rotech continues to enhance and optimize our solutions to add value not only to the efficiencies and technological advancement of the organization, but most importantly, to the health and well-being of our patients.
