Solving Healthcare’s Provider Directory Challenge With a Single Source of Truth
Provider directories are one of the most fundamental parts of the healthcare infrastructure: They list all the physicians in the area broken down by the insurance plans they accept and the medical services they offer, and some might include professionals like nutritionists or physical therapists. Without these essential directories, it would be difficult or even impossible for patients and providers alike to understand the medical resources available in a given area.
Provider directories become better with more data, but they also become more complex to manage. Details such as a provider’s address, contact information, service offerings, equipment availability, insurance affiliations, and more can (and do) change frequently. With this, keeping everything updated for hundreds or thousands of providers — ones with various healthcare networks and ever changing service offerings — proves to be a serious administrative challenge. Without the time, staff, or tools to keep up with the pace of change, we get inaccurate provider directories that only make healthcare less accessible and efficient.
Various mandates require directories to undergo complete updates monthly, quarterly, semiannually, or yearly. This repetitive provider directory management undertaking contributes to the estimated $300 billion the healthcare industry spends every year due to administrative complexity “that could be eliminated without harming consumers or care quality.” Everyone agrees we need a better way to manage provider directories — and emerging technologies could certainly provide that solution.
The Cost of Provider Directory Management
Inefficient provider directory management might sound like a minor problem that creates a small cost. However, the healthcare industry spends $2.1 billion on provider directories annually — and often with underwhelming results. (In fact, a Medicaid audit found that more than half of provider directories contain significant errors.) The scope of this problem should be cause for alarm. When provider directories aren’t accurate and complete, there are implications beyond wasting a few billion dollars.
Those include patients who go to out-of-network providers, providers that struggle to keep their billing and administrative costs down, health information exchanges that cannot share information securely, and health plans that risk regulatory noncompliance. The point is, anything less than a perfect provider directory has negative impacts on both the healthcare industry as a whole and the patients it serves. Unfortunately, the scale and complexity of provider directory management make it highly prone to imperfection. That’s where blockchain in healthcare comes in.
Blockchain Technology in Healthcare: A Revolution in the Making
There’s no shortage of blockchain applications in healthcare, and there will be many more as healthcare-related digital transformation becomes a priority throughout the industry.
When it comes to provider directory management, blockchain could eliminate the need for directory managers to contact each provider directly to inquire about information updates. Instead, those providers could report that information to a blockchain — a distributed ledger with immutable information — whenever something changes (think phone numbers, office addresses, and so on).
At the same time, a smart contract can trigger such changes to all records that are applicable, thus reducing manual efforts. In this way, keeping a provider directory up to date would simply mean having providers update the blockchain directly in one place (rather than forcing insurance companies to make their own lists).
A decentralized repository of provider information — one that’s verified by trusted third parties and acts as a single source of truth — could also eliminate the need for multiple entities to manage common data elements across different directories. Finally, a provider directory based on blockchain could integrate with other technologies and data sources to become a high-value resource by providing additional services on top of such a network. These capabilities might include automated credential checks, real-time notifications on facility status, and the automation of repetitive and mundane tasks that go into managing provider data.
Blockchain and healthcare are natural partners because they have similar priorities: accuracy, security, privacy, efficiency, and accessibility. For the purposes of provider directory management (and countless other aspects of healthcare), a blockchain serves as a single source of truth that integrates all critical information under one umbrella for all participants. In this particular blockchain use case, it integrates up-to-date information from providers so individual entities don’t have to solicit updates themselves or operate with an incomplete, out-of-date directory.
Even in other aspects of healthcare, blockchain’s use cases promise to streamline almost all aspects of administration. Imagine what could happen if countless patient directories — each with its own issues — consolidated into one accurate, authoritative directory that also happens to be simple for the patient to privately control, manage, and share.
The network might provide sufficient privacy protections and protocols using zero-knowledge proof to exchange personal health record information without revealing sensitive information. Because it can safely integrate with systems, blockchain’s applications in this healthcare function promise to upend expectations and elevate results faster and further than we’d ever think possible.
In short, provider directory management is simply the foundation for many future healthcare-focused solutions that can be built on the blockchain. This sets the stage for a shareddigital transformation in the healthcarespherethat benefitsall parties — whether that’s by paving the way for scalable precision medicine, ensuring pharmaceutical provenance, enabling real-time collaboration on healthcare claims, or one of its many other promising capabilities.
Now, the question for leaders in the healthcare sphere is this: How could blockchain-based digital transformation shift your organization’s day-to-day functioning for the better? Learn more about blockchain’s array of use cases in digital transformation here, or reach out to Chainyard to discuss how it could fit in your own strategy.
This article was originally published on Trust Your Supplier..
Today in the world of Supplier Information Management speed and risk mitigation are tremendously important in establishing the partnerships so critical to business growth and success. Unfortunately, most organizations have been unable to address these challenges. Did you know that the typical timeframe to onboard a new supplier within many enterprise organizations is more than 30 days? In a world where speed is currency, that can have a huge impact on a business’s ability to pivot, grow, and innovate. A lot of that has to do with the information required to vet a new supplier, and the work required to do that vetting. Numerous spreadsheets, portals, systems, and unsecured document exchanges make this a very cumbersome process. And on the supplier side, each customer demands this same information, creating an incredibly repetitive and non-value added work effort. In summary, it’s a lot of inefficiencies and unnecessary attracted cost for everyone.
Trust Your Supplier (or TYS), addresses these pain points and more. Built on IBM Blockchain, TYS is a strategic collaboration between Chainyard and IBM and a revolutionary solution that brings efficiency and optimization to address these challenges. It’s compellingly different than any supplier management network in operation today. Simply put, TYS creates a Trusted Source of Supplier Information and Digital Identity that simplifies and accelerates Supplier Onboarding and Lifecycle Management. Supplier-provided trusted data, their identity, is used by buyers to validate and manage the partnership. It’s immediate access to real-time data that generates massive savings and reduction of risk. The value proposition is compelling for suppliers too. The single blockchain-based profile eliminates redundant submission of the same information multiple times to different buyers and reduces time to the first transaction and ultimately when they get paid. They are also discoverable on the network, creating opportunities for new business with other buyers on the network.
And the game-changer is the TYS Data Marketplace. Such as an App Store on your mobile device, this marketplace is a collection of gold-standard services available from firms that are the world’s leading authorities on financial health, sustainability, risk & resilience, and a host of other capacities that help evaluate the performance of your partners. Renowned firms like Dun & Bradstreet, Rapid Ratings, Ecovadis, and many others offer their services directly on the network where their ratings, scores, and evaluations are aggregated into a single, seamless view for the user. This dramatically reduces the time required to conduct due diligence and qualify a partner, saving time and cost. Best of all, free content is available from practically all of these providers, while advanced premium services are can be purchased ala carte to meet your specific needs.
To ensure state of the art, enterprise-grade trust, TYS is built on Blockchain, creating a decentralized system that is not controlled by a single company. It can quickly become a global standard for supplier and buyer collaboration as well as increasing the participation of third parties who can provide services into this neutral environment.
It’s clear the new normal in supplier management centers on trust. Knowing and trusting your suppliers, in corporate responsibility, sustainability, diversity, financial stability, and a host of other areas are key to ensuring enterprises can responsibly conduct business. Suppliers need to build that trust and continually demonstrate this commitment to their partners. The partnership has never been so important.
