D I G I T A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N I N H E A L T H

Transforming the

healthcare worker

experience

How the Modern Workplace

empowers individuals and teams

to work more productively,

efficiently, and securely

Understaffed, overburdened healthcare teams

are struggling to keep pace with increasing

healthcare demands driven by an aging

population and higher rates of chronic disease.

Providers need to increase individual

productivity and organizational efficiency to

reduce burnout and reduce care. By enabling

a lean, modern workplace they can give

employees the freedom to be productive

anywhere, easily organize workflow with their

colleagues, collaborate in real time from

multiple locations, and make better decisions

through insightful data analytics—without ever

sacrificing security.

D I G I T A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N I N H E A L T H 2

It’s another early morning for a

dedicated care worker. She

knows that buried within the

hospital’s clinical system lies

crucial information that will

dictate her workday, and that

her ability to organize her tasks

effectively with her colleagues

will have real consequences on

the lives of patients currently

under their care.

Because it's difficult to know whether the right people

ever saw or acted on information sent via email to

their overflowing inboxes, her team convenes for an

in-person huddle at the start of each day. After a futile

search for the report she vaguely remembers seeing

somewhere last week, she leaves her desk to make her

way across the hospital campus, where similarly

harried caregivers impatiently await everyone’s arrival

so they can get the meeting over with and get to their

first patient appointments on time.

Wrangling a multitude of incompatible apps

and systems to record, find, and share necessary

information eats up valuable time, as does

interrupting workflow to confer in person on small

details. Such inefficiencies increase provider costs,

further limiting access to care in a world with

finite resources but growing healthcare needs.

Unsustainable workloads increase stress,

leading to high levels of professional burnout.

The toll of inefficiency

Similar scenes play out daily at health providers

everywhere. Overburdened clinical workers spend too

much time on administrivia and responding to

regulatory requirements and not enough with

patients. In the United States, for example, physicians

spend almost half their day on desk work, such as

filling out electronic medical records, and less than a

third dispensing care.1

To increase productivity and reduce burnout,

providers are striving to eliminate waste and

Modern tools for the

Modern Workplace

1Christine Sinsky, MD; Lacey Colligan, MD; Ling Li, PhD; Mirela Prgomet, PhD et.

al; (2016, December 6). Allocation of Physician Time in Ambulatory Practice: A Time

and Motion Study in 4 Specialties. Retrieved from Annals of Internal Medicine.

D I G I T A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N I N H E A L T H 3

2Tait D. Shanafelt, MD; Omar Hasan, MBBS, MPH; Lotte N. Dyrbye, MD, MHPE.

(2015, August 8). Changes in Burnout and Satisfaction With Work-Life Balance in

Physicians and the General US Working Population Between 2011 and 2014.

Retrieved from Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

inefficiency, often turning to lean methodologies to

ensure that every action adds value to the care

process. Outdated, incompatible tools and siloed

information undermine these efforts, however.

Many clinicians feel that very IT solutions that had

promised to make their jobs easier actually make

them harder.2

Providers need to modernize the workplace with

more flexible, better integrated tools that serve the

way their employees work, rather than requiring

them to compromise their workflow in unnatural ways.

In a Modern Workplace, employees:

• Have the freedom to be productive anywhere,

using the device of their choice.

• Can collaborate in real time with multiple

individuals in multiple locations.

• Can access documents in a centralized place,

and share information securely inside and

outside their organization.

• Benefit from task automation so they can

concentrate their precious minutes on the

meaningful actions they do best.

D I G I T A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N I N H E A L T H 4

Introducing Microsoft 365 Enterprise,

an intelligent solution for empowering

individuals and teams

How Microsoft 365 Enterprise empowers employees

Built for teamwork: Connect everyone with Enterprise-class email,

voice, and video and community workspaces for real-time document

sharing and collaboration.

Integrated for simplicity: Reduce total cost of ownership with up to

date, cloud-based management, rich telemetry from your

environment, and self-service.

Intelligent security: Protect identity, apps, data, and devices; thwart

advanced threats; manage data archiving, governance and discovery;

and accelerate compliance with the European Union General Data

Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Unlocks creativity: Visualize information in new ways to create

compelling content with intelligent apps, and organize workspaces

to accommodate the unique ways teams work together.

Learn more about Microsoft 365 Enterprise.

Maximizing individual and

team productivity

To improve patient experiences and organizational

outcomes, providers need to reach more people

with up-to-date information and care, reduce patient

wait times, gain easier access to colleagues such

as internal specialists and researchers at other

institutions, and collaborate with others efficiently to

determine more quickly best next steps for patients.

Achieving these goals requires better productivity at

the individual, team, and cross-organizational levels.

More productive workers

In a Modern Workplace, employees need to get up

and running quickly, without having to wait for IT.

With Microsoft 365 Enterprise, setting up a new

device only requires credentials and an Internet

connection. Assigned apps and user policies arrive

automatically, so employees can connect to office

systems and get to work right away sending email,

authoring documents, posting messages on the

company’s network, finding internal subject matter

experts, and locating relevant documents. Since

privacy in any healthcare environment is critical,

Microsoft 365 Enterprise suggests data classifications

for sensitive information, while guiding the owners to

appropriately control who has access. Creating and

sharing interactive reports that visualize real-time

data helps clinical workers keep track of important

metrics, such as patient throughput or illness trends.

• Seamless, connected experiences for users that

enable sharing and discovery across apps.

• Simplified, centralized IT management with built

in security and compliance.

• A complete, integrated set of tools that maximizes

employee productivity and creativity.

Building on the experience of millions of customers

who use Microsoft productivity tools in the

workplace, Microsoft has designed a comprehensive,

intelligent solution, Microsoft 365 Enterprise, that

combines Office 365, Windows 10 Enterprise, and

Enterprise Mobility + Security to provide the

following benefits that address the evolving

challenges of the modern workplace:

D I G I T A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N I N H E A L T H 5

More secure external collaboration

The need for efficient collaboration extends beyond

organizational walls. Providers must coordinate with

payors, outside clinical specialists, patients and their

extended care teams, and with other facilities. This

may require ad-hoc communication or sharing of

information. Microsoft 365 Enterprise makes it

possible to invite external parties to internal spaces

such as Teams or SharePoint sites, and to classify

documents as confidential or highly confidential to

limit access. Centralized policies can automatically

identify and encrypt documents containing personal

data stored in Office 365 or select SaaS apps,

prevent them from being forwarded outside the

organization via email, and revoke access if

necessary in order to prevent data loss.

Increasing efficiency,

accelerating innovation

Provider organizations such as Advocate Health Care

and Adventist Health System are already

experiencing significant productivity gains from using

Office 365, empowering their employees to innovate

the way they work organically. A commissioned study

by Forrester Consulting, “Business Value Realization

with Office 365: A Total Economic Impact Analysis of

Microsoft Office 365,” describes the tremendous cost

savings from adopting Office 365.

Providers already using Office 365 can reap

additional benefits from using components they

may not realize they already own, such as Teams.

Fully adopting Microsoft 365 Enterprise further

increases security, which is essential for an industry

that is a top target for cyberattacks such as

ransomware, insider misuse of privileges, and

physical theft.3

3See Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 10th Edition for an analysis

of security breaches in healthcare.

Modernizing the provider workplace will help clinical

and non-clinical teams spend more of their time

more meaningfully: interacting with patients and

making informed decisions that improve care.

More efficient and flexible teamwork

Microsoft 365 Enterprise gives healthcare employees

flexibility in how they work together across different

projects and diverse working styles. Office 365

includes Teams, which provides a canvas for easily

designing a virtual workspace where team members

can collaborate in a scheduled or an impromptu

manner using a variety of tools:

• A virtual meeting room for voice, video and chat

communications, and for collectively viewing

documents, photos, videos, and other content.

• A persistent conversation board that can send

alerts to individual team members.

• A team calendar, a team wiki for sharing ideas

and decisions, and a document store where

people can edit documents simultaneously

and route them for review and approval.

• A to-do list that allows project managers to

visualize the team plan, assign tasks, and

track progress.

Team members can add hubs for a variety of apps

from Microsoft and other vendors, such as OneNote,

Trello, Power BI, Adobe Creative Cloud, and YouTube,

as well as websites relevant to their work.

D I G I T A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N I N H E A L T H 6

To explore more stories about innovation in health,

please visit Microsoft's health industry website.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise is a complete, intelligent solution that

empowers everyone to be creative and work together, securely

Office 365 offers a complete enterprise cloud productivity service

with capabilities including authoring, mail and social, site and

content management, meeting and voice capabilities, and

analytics.

Enterprise Mobility + Security helps IT protect and manage

corporate applications and data on any Windows, iOS, or Android

device with capabilities including behavioral analysis and threat

detection, identity and access management in the cloud, simpler

management of apps and devices, protection for information

wherever it goes, and on-premises identity and access

management.

Windows 10 Enterprise is the latest version of Windows for the

enterprise and includes security capabilities such as endpoint

breach protection,* convenient enterprise-grade alternatives to

passwords (biometrics, PINs); data encryption; policy-based

information protection; rigorous access controls for device

protection; and the ability to detect and remediate persistent

threats and data breaches on the network.

Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure has achieved compliance with

industry standards such as Health Insurance Portability and

Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States, ISO 27001/ISO

27018, the European Union Model Clause, HiTrust, Australia IRAP,

UK BS1596, Article 29 WP, Singapore MTCS, and Netherlands

NEN7510.

Learn more about Microsoft 365 Enterprise.

*Requires Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection

7

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