On March 6, 2020 Microsoft announced new capabilities in Microsoft Teams that empower care teams and enable healthcare organizations to securely communicate and collaborate.
You can read the full announcement here, and read below for a detailed look at the newly announced capabilities.
Schedule and conduct virtual visits with the Bookings app in Teams
The Bookings app offers a simple way to schedule and conduct B2C appointments via Microsoft Teams. In healthcare, providers can use the complete meetings platform in Microsoft Teams, combined with the Bookings app in Teams, to schedule, manage, and conduct virtual visits with patients.
With Bookings in Teams, healthcare organizations can:
The Bookings app in Teams is an extension of the current Microsoft Bookings capabilities available to Microsoft 365 customers.
Learn more about how Microsoft is expanding the features and availability of Microsoft Bookings for enterprises.
In addition, with the Microsoft Graph API, organizations can incorporate Teams meetings into other unique healthcare workflows. The API supports the integration of both scheduling and meeting-join links to existing healthcare applications like electronic health record systems. Partners like Modality Systems are already using these APIs to bring customized visit workflows with Microsoft Teams to healthcare providers.
Reach the right on-shift clinician with targeted communications
Knowing who is on shift and being able to reach them at the right time is critical to delivering timely patient care. Often, valuable time is spent trying to identify the correct contact information for healthcare staff members. With targeted communications in Teams, you can manually create tags to organize users based on attributes such as role, skill, or location.
Once applied, you can message everyone with the selected tag at the same time in a chat or channel conversation. For example, you can message all @nursepractitioners at one time.
Teams also supports tagging by shift, which automatically assigns tags to users based on their active schedules in the Shifts app in Teams. This allows for integration with various workforce management systems like Kronos, AMiOn, and JDA, so notifications only reach staff who are actually on shift at the time.
Learn more about targeted communications with tags in the Manage Tags in Microsoft Teams documentation.
Microsoft is partnering to drive healthcare innovation
Navigating the challenges and disruption facing the healthcare industry requires partnership among healthcare organizations, industry associations, and technology providers.
- Innovaccer is integrating care management and coordination into Microsoft Teams to reduce redundant tasks, surface insights, and increase communication across the care team.
- Andor Health gives clinicians the power to configure workflows and bring messages originating in an EHR directly into Teams, enabling clinicians to personalize the signals used to help them provide care.
- Dapasoft Corolar brings integration with EHRs using FHIR to enable care providers to communicate about patient care in real time with Microsoft Teams.
- Imprivata enables Microsoft 365 to support “badge-tap” access to make secure sign-on to applications, whether on-premise or in the cloud, even more efficient for staff. Clinicians can simply tap their badge to be quickly authenticated and log directly into and out of Teams instead of entering a username and password to access mobile and other shared clinical devices.
Resources for healthcare organizations
Check out the Microsoft Teams for healthcare page to learn more about how Teams can empower healthcare professionals in a modern workplace. To help get started with digital transformation for your healthcare organization, check out the resources below:
- Teams healthcare templates information
- Teams policy packages for healthcare
- HIPAA compliance and Teams whitepaper
WheelHouse IT has extensive experience helping healthcare organizations configure and manage their Microsoft 365 environments to meet HIPAA compliance requirements and enable secure, efficient collaboration across care teams.
Ready to Transform Your Healthcare IT?
Whether you’re exploring virtual visits, secure staff communication, or full Microsoft 365 deployment, our team can help. Visit wheelhouseit.com to connect with a WheelHouse IT specialist today.
