Salesforce Health Cloud 101: Complete Guide
This comprehensive blog will explore this innovative healthcare platform’s powerful features and capabilities. Whether you are a healthcare provider, patient, or simply interested in the future of healthcare technology, this guide will provide a solid foundation for understanding and leveraging Salesforce Health Cloud’s benefits, leaving you confident in your knowledge of this transformative technology.
Throughout this article, we delve into the critical components of Health Cloud, including patient engagement, care coordination, and population health management. After reading this article you will completely know what Salesforce health cloud is?
We will also discuss how this platform can streamline workflows, improve patient outcomes, and revolutionize the healthcare experience. Read to the end to discover Salesforce Health Cloud’s potential and transformative impact on the healthcare industry, inspiring a new era of healthcare technology.
Salesforce Health Cloud - An Overview
- Better care for patients: Doctors can use Salesforce Health Cloud to track patient information, communicate easily, and create personalized treatment plans.
- Easier work for doctors: The platform automates tasks like appointment reminders and refills, and helps doctors work together as a team. This frees up doctors' time to focus on what matters most - their patients!
- Smarter healthcare decisions: Salesforce Health Cloud collects patient data in one place and helps doctors understand it better. This allows hospitals to spot potential problems early and make better choices about patient care.
Salesforce Health Cloud Features
Salesforce Health Cloud Features makes this CRM a powerful player in healthcare industry. Users can access a unified platform that gathers and visualizes patient data from various sources. This information creates a comprehensive picture of a patient’s health journey.
Salesforce Health Cloud Features and Benefits
- Unified Patient Data: The platform gathers and visualizes patient data from different sources, providing a comprehensive view of a patient’s health journey.
- Efficient Patient Management: Users can efficiently manage appointments and details, communicate effectively, and build strong patient-doctor relationships.
- Collaboration and Communication: Healthcare teams can foster effortless partnerships to ensure all involved parties participate in patient care via a coordinated approach.
- Centralized Approach: The platform streamlines communication and tracks patient progress through their treatment.
Integration with Electronic Health Records and Healthcare Systems
The health cloud Salesforce supports integration with electronic health records and various healthcare systems, offering a comprehensive view of patient data. Salesforce Health Cloud integration enables healthcare organizations to:
- Extract Insights: Data analysis allows healthcare organizations to extract insights from patient data to identify trends, improve patient care, and make more informed, data-driven decisions.
- Virtual Consultations and Remote Monitoring: The platform helps doctors run virtual consultations and remotely monitor patients, enhancing patient care and improving outcomes.
What is Salesforce Health Cloud Used For?
Salesforce Health Cloud’s features make it a competent tool for healthcare organizations. Its capabilities help it cover various patient care basics, improving care quality and delivery. This comprehensive platform enhances patient care by providing a unified view of patient data and facilitating collaboration among healthcare professionals.
Key Capabilities
- Personalized Patient Care: The health cloud can deliver customized patient care plans combined with condition-specific patient education, leading to improved patient care coordination and various preventative measures.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: This comprehensive approach enables healthcare organizations to make data-driven decisions, improving patient outcomes and streamlining healthcare operations.
- Automation and Streamlining: The platform automates tasks, streamlines workflows, and improves healthcare operations by integrating patient data and facilitating efficient communication among healthcare professionals.
Efficient Workload Management
An efficient healthcare workload management system is critical to the health cloud Salesforce. This system helps implement cost-effective measures by ensuring patients receive better care the first time and resources are better allocated during the process. The benefits of this approach include:
- Reduced Patient Readmission: Patient readmission rates are significantly reduced by providing better care the first time around.
- Improved Resource Management: Hospital resources are better managed, preventing excessive spending and improving overall financial outcomes.
- Enhanced Patient Experience: The efficient workload management system ensures patients receive timely and effective care, leading to a better overall experience.
You can read about Salesforce Health Cloud use in detail as well with us.
The Salesforce Health Cloud Architecture
The Salesforce health cloud architecture has six essential components that run the entire program. It uses a multi-layered architecture optimized for scalability, security, and integration. These key components include:
Salesforce Platform
The Salesforce platform lays the foundation and has the essential core infrastructure and relevant services to manage data and applications and control user access. The platform’s features include scalability to handle varying workloads, a security infrastructure to protect sensitive data, and multi-tenancy that securely separates data used between different healthcare organizations.
Salesforce Health Cloud Data Model
This model helps define patient data storage and management structures unique to healthcare. The features include all salesforce objects (more on this ahead), such as contacts and accounts, along with various custom objects (Encounter, CarePlan, MedicationOrder).
The health cloud data model gives users a detailed view of patients’ demographics, medical histories, and care plans. Consolidated data repositories can go a long way, particularly for patient treatment, because all essential information can be stored and accessed in one place.
Middleware
The middleware bridges the health cloud Salesforce and external healthcare systems such as lab systems, appointment tools, and electronic health records (EHRs). Middleware streamlines data exchange between the Salesforce health cloud and different healthcare systems.
Salesforce Health Cloud integrates third-party systems using middleware to improve patient care delivery. Unified patient information access allows doctors to leverage patient data from different sources to create personalized treatment plans. With more information available, doctors can customize treatment precisely based on a patient’s condition.
User Interface
Healthcare providers use the health cloud Salesforce via a web-based user interface designed for them. This interface has readily available communication tools, patient data, care plans, and reporting features. Patient portals can be integrated to access health information and speak with their doctor.
The Salesforce health cloud interface might take some time, but it can be incorporated into training programs during the system’s implementation. An intuitive interface improves usability and experience with the health cloud Salesforce.
Security
Healthcare data contains sensitive and personal information that must always be protected. The Salesforce health cloud uses various features to ensure patient data protection, e.g:
- Role-based access control controls patient data access based on their roles and permissions.
- The latest data encryption tools to protect data during transit to ensure the utmost integrity and confidentiality.
- Leaving audit trails to track user activity and data access for improved accountability and regulatory HIPAA compliance.
Even though security is listed lower on this list, it is one of the most critical health cloud features. Patient data cannot get into the wrong hands, nor should it ever be in a compromising position.
Analytics and Reporting
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The health cloud Salesforce built-in analytics and reporting tools allow healthcare organizations to learn about care trends, patient demographics, and organizational performance metrics. The health cloud generates detailed reports with all this information, allowing stakeholders to know about the current situation and plan accordingly.
A comprehensive understanding of the Salesforce health cloud’s architecture allows healthcare organizations to implement it effectively. This detailed description of its key components improves an understanding of the system, subsequently helping plan a more effective implementation.
Salesforce Health Cloud Implementation – Step By Step Guide
Once you’ve understood what the health cloud Salesforce can do, having a Salesforce health cloud implementation strategy is essential. The health cloud is a complex software that requires proper planning and configuration for a correct implementation. Sometimes, working with Salesforce health cloud implementation services can also help!
The Salesforce health cloud implementation steps include preparation, installation and configuration, customization, and data migration. Each component lays the foundation for the next, making it extremely important for implementation to be done right. Here’s how to implement the Salesforce health cloud:
The Preparation Stage
In preparation, patients and members are linked with healthcare organizations and providers in the Salesforce health cloud. Chatter settings enable internal collaboration channels and guarantee data protection for patient records.
User accounts are set up to control system access and prevent unauthorized access. Patients and members are individuals with defined data migration rules and configured personal accounts. Suitable secure measures must be incorporated to ensure compliance with HIPAA and other regulations. Proper preparation lays the foundation for an effective Salesforce health cloud implementation strategy.
Installing and Configuring Health Cloud
Once the health cloud is ready, users can log in using the installation link in the contract. This process activates the Salesforce health cloud in your healthcare organization, enabling authorized users to access the system. However, several steps remain before the system is fully operational.
Next, user profiles are created, and access is granted to relevant users. This involves assigning different health cloud permission sets and licenses based on user roles, such as:
- Admins
- Patients
- Care coordinators
- Other relevant roles
Additionally, all these users must be trained to operate the Salesforce health cloud. This is crucial due to variations in technical experience among users. Healthcare organizations must invest in timely and accurate training for the best results.
The success of this training process determines how well the Salesforce health cloud will operate in the long run. Thorough preparation and proper configuration ensure that the Salesforce health cloud performs its job effectively.
Customization and Data Migration
The final step in implementing the health cloud involves tailoring the platform to your specific needs and migrating essential data from legacy systems to the health cloud. The Salesforce health cloud is highly modular, allowing it to be designed to cater to specific user and workflow requirements.
To achieve this, you can:
- Design custom record types for patients, doctors, and data models
- Create custom page layouts to suit your needs
Migrating patient data from electronic health records (EHRs) and other healthcare systems brings essential data into the mix, making it easier to map patient data accurately. Comprehensively mapped patient data provides current and future healthcare providers with a clear and detailed view of the patient’s journey.
Having patient data from various sources allows healthcare providers to understand a patient’s health progression over time. This helps prevent medication mix-ups, treatment options, and proactive measures based on historical data. These sources include:
- Prescriptions
- Medications
- Treatments
- Symptoms
- Doctors visited
Proper Salesforce health cloud data implementation determines its short- and long-term effectiveness. Beyond the initial inertia, user adoption will gradually improve. A vital component of this success is patient data management. This next section explains how the Salesforce health cloud manages patient data to get the job done.
How Does Salesforce Health Cloud Manage Patient Data?
The Salesforce health cloud combines standard and custom objects for patient data management. These objects can be grouped into core, health-cloud-specific, implementation-specific, and custom objects. Here is a detailed explanation of these objects:
Core Objects
The two health cloud core objects include:
- The patient object represents individual members and patients in the health cloud. It stores all demographic information, contact information, allergies and medications, and overall medical history.
- The contact object manages relationships between patients, their families, caregivers, and healthcare providers.
Health-Cloud Specific Objects
The different health-cloud-specific objects include:
- CarePlan will design and deploy customer treatment plans that list the treatment goals, actions, and interventions for specific patient conditions.
- CarePlanActivity is used to track individual treatment actions and tasks within a care plan, as well as to track progress and ensure adherence.
- The encounter object for patient-healthcare provider interactions. It helps record the date, diagnosis, location, and treatment.
- The immunization object is to track patient immunization records, including the vaccination data, type, and next due date.
- MedicationOrder to track patient prescriptions, including medication duration, dosage, and future refills.
- The problem objects to document specific diagnoses or health concerns associated with the patient.
Implementation Specific Objects
Health cloud implementations can vary depending on healthcare organization size and specialization. Implementation-specific objects include:
- Social history is where a patient’s social determinants are captured and stored. These include living conditions, employment status, and lifestyle choices.
- The objective is to define specific patient health goals to map treatment progress for context, such as how far they’ve come and if changes are required.
- The task object is to manage patient care-related actions or tasks that must be completed. Think of this like a to-do list function.
Custom Objects
The Salesforce health cloud comes with several objects for various functions. However, custom Salesforce objects can be designed and coded for a specific need. For example, a custom object could be created for lab results, to track a particular procedure, or to capture and track patient data points relevant to a specific delivery of care model.
Clinical Data Model (FHIR)
Healthcare organizations that need advanced data interoperability can use the clinical data model based on the FHIR (fast healthcare interoperability resources) data standard. The FHIR standard allows for easier patient data integration from different healthcare systems. Using a standardized data format helps improve data exchange, streamlining data collection, organization, and usage.
Data Relationships
Unlike other objects, a data relationship object is not isolated. Data relationships help different objects communicate and operate with each other, helping build a clear picture of a patient’s healthcare journey.
Patient records can be linked with several encounter objects, or CarePlan objects can be used for a particular patient’s condition. There are countless possibilities, each used when relevant and for the best possible treatment.
Using data relationships allows healthcare organizations and providers to streamline patient treatments with efficient patient data management, better care coordination, and personalized patient treatment journeys.
How does Salesforce Health Cloud help doctors give patients better care?
Personalizing the patient journey helps healthcare providers create treatment plans relevant to each patient’s condition and requirements. Personalization at different treatment touchpoints helps foster improved patient engagement and treatment outcomes. Here’s how the Salesforce health cloud does this:
Encouraging Personalized Communication
Patients can be segmented based on health conditions, treatment plans, and demographics. Healthcare organizations use this information to send targeted correspondence (emails, SMS, portal messages) with educational resources and appointment reminders.
The health cloud uses a patient’s specific preferences and needs to develop personalized treatment plans centered around them. Incorporating medication history, allergies, and patient goals into the treatment plan ensures better results while promoting medication adherence.
This helps patients get essential treatment, but complex treatment plans can be confusing and overwhelming. Through two-way patient portal communication, patients can ask their doctor questions, report new symptoms, and easily schedule appointments for a better health experience.
Leveraging Data-Driven Insights
A patient can generate large amounts of healthcare data at any given time, e.g., medication and treatment history, health social determinants, and overall medical history. The Salesforce health cloud offers a 360-degree and holistic patient view, with data aggregated from various sources.
The Salesforce health cloud’s analytics capabilities can sift through large amounts of patient data to generate meaningful insights for various use case scenarios. For example, the health cloud can identify at-risk patients based on historical and current data analysis. These findings help develop proactive treatment interventions that could reduce readmissions and improve patient treatment in the short and long run.
Predictive analytics in healthcare is responsible for changing healthcare as we know it. A consolidated healthcare data repository makes data accessibility exponentially easier, improving patient outcomes and empowering patients simultaneously.
Pushing for Patient Empowerment
Patient empowerment is an essential treatment component because patients need to be looped into the essentials of their treatment. The Salesforce health cloud has three key elements that empower patients to retain control of their treatment. Here’s how they do it:
Patient Self-Service Portal
Patients can access their test results, health records, educational resources, and appointments through a self-service portal, which allows them to take more ownership of their health and treatments.
Medication Management Tools
An integrated medication management tool sends medication reminders, tracks medication refills, and has a medication knowledge base. Patients can know what medication they need, dosage, and what it does for them. These tools help promote medication adherence, an integral component of patient treatment.
Telehealth Integration
In a post-pandemic world, telehealth integration in the Salesforce health cloud helps patients schedule and attend virtual consultations with their doctors. A virtual doctor’s appointment empowers patients to get essential consultations, even if they’re limited by mobility or consequences.
Building Streamlined Workflows
Healthcare providers must manage patients, patient data, treatments, medications, and administrative tasks. This can overwhelm even the most organized individual, which is where the health cloud comes in two key ways:
Task Automation
The Salesforce Health Cloud can automate appointment scheduling and reminders, lab result notifications, and prescription refill reminders, among many other things. Patient EHRs and billing information are automatically updated.
When a patient is admitted, records are automatically generated, or existing records are updated. Process automation frees up valuable time for healthcare professionals to focus on complex cases and other patient interactions. We often underestimate the effectiveness of process automation in streamlining workflows.
Team Collaboration
The care team involves every healthcare provider (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, specialists) in a case. The health cloud securely shares progress notes, patient information, and the care plan with everyone to ensure every relevant individual has a comprehensive view of their patient’s healthcare.
You have an efficient and effective system for patient treatment progress using the health cloud and task automation. Effective cross-departmental collaborations yield better results than siloed departments with limited or delayed communication. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, but having powerful foundational tools helps manage any potential medical challenge.
Salesforce Integrations
The Salesforce health cloud has several essential features that help improve healthcare operations. However, third-party integrations can be added to further enhance or refine functionality.
Integrating an electronic health record (EHR) system using health level seven (HL7) standards and leveraging MulseSoft is child’s play for the Salesforce health cloud.
Integration Components
This section breaks down each element and then explains how they work together to improve the Salesforce health cloud user experience.
Salesforce Health Cloud EHR Integration
Electronic health records (EHRs) are digital patient records containing medical history, diagnosis, medications and allergies, lab results, immunizations, imaging reports, and demographic information. Integrating an EHR into the Salesforce health cloud makes essential patient information available to doctors to understand their patients’ long-term healthcare journey.
Salesforce Health Cloud and HL7
HL7 is an international standard for healthcare data exchange over the Internet. It defines the formats and protocols for different healthcare data types and enables seamless communication between healthcare systems.
Salesforce Integration With MuleSoft
It is an integration platform that facilitates communication between healthcare systems, applications, and software. Mulesoft offers all the tools and connectors needed to integrate EHRs and other systems within the Salesforce health cloud. Mulesoft integrates all of these systems while using HL7 standards.
Health Cloud Integrations in the Real World
Consider this situation:
Patient data is generated and stored within the integrated EHR system and formatted according to HL7 standards. Using pre-built connectors for simplified integration, Mulesoft behaves like a bridge between the EHR and Salesforce health cloud.
Next, Mulesoft will convert HL7 data so the health cloud data model can better understand it, often handling large and complex data volumes for smooth data flow between the health cloud and EHR. Finally, this converted HL7 data is safely transferred into the Salesforce health cloud program, creating a unified data repository with robust encryptions and access controls.
Salesforce Health Cloud Pricing Overview
If you’re reading this, you’ve learned nearly everything about the Salesforce health cloud. This section expands on how much the Salesforce health cloud will cost monthly per user. We’ve put this information in this table, making it easier to understand:
Feature |
Health Cloud Enterprise (USD/user/month) |
Health Cloud Unlimited (USD/user/month) |
Price (billed annually) |
$325 |
$500 |
CRM Functionality |
Out-of-the-box CRM for healthcare and life sciences |
Full CRM power and support for healthcare and life sciences |
Patient Management |
✓ |
✓ |
Care Coordination |
✓ |
✓ |
Case Management |
✓ |
✓ |
Health Data Integration |
✓ |
✓ |
Analytics and Insights |
Limited |
Advanced |
Telehealth and Remote Monitoring |
Basic |
Advanced |
Storage |
Standard |
More Storage |
Automation |
Limited |
More Automation |
Artificial Intelligence (AI) |
No |
Included (Einstein for Service) |
Data Cloud |
No |
Included |
Slack Collaboration |
No |
Included |
Premier Success Plan |
No |
Included |
Full Sandbox |
No |
Included |
The Health Cloud Enterprise best suits small organizations that need basic CRM functionality. The Health Cloud Unlimited package is for large organizations requiring comprehensive support, advanced features, and Einstein AI-powered functionality.
Salesforce Health Cloud Limitations
The Salesforce health cloud is a potent platform for patient data management and improving patient care. However, it has limitations; we’ve listed them here to give you a better idea:
Data Integration
Integrating the Salesforce health cloud with third-party tools is beneficial but complex and requires significant development experience. Data integration sounds simple, but various components are involved, e.g., HL7 standards, and getting them right isn’t for the faint-hearted.
Additionally, varying data formats can be challenging when mapping data between different healthcare systems. Proper data mapping requires careful configurations and needs to be regularly maintained once implemented. A dedicated IT team with Salesforce experience needs to be available in case the system malfunctions and the entire hospital is at a standstill.
Security and Privacy
Healthcare data security is essential, with no room for compromise. Managing role-based access control is crucial to patient data privacy; improperly managing user access could result in data breaches and HIPAA violations, which are unacceptable.
The Salesforce health cloud data encryption system is robust and impenetrable; specific healthcare organizations require additional data security. This requires additional integrations, adding compatibility, and leaving the door open for additional security risks.
Cost Considerations
Salesforce Health Cloud can be expensive, particularly for larger organizations using the Health Cloud unlimited plan, which has several advanced features. Additionally, Salesforce health cloud implementation requires data migration resources, consulting services, and training programs.
Additional Salesforce objects and functions can be expensive if the healthcare organization wants custom integrations. Customizing workflow development will cost more to design, develop, and deploy.
Conclusion
This Salesforce Health Cloud guide provides a comprehensive overview of the key concepts, features, and benefits of Salesforce Health Cloud. It has covered the essential aspects of the platform, including its purpose, core components, and integration capabilities.
By understanding Salesforce Health Cloud’s capabilities and potential applications, healthcare organizations can enjoy its power to maintain patient engagement, improve clinical outcomes, and enhance operational efficiency.
Ultimately, Salesforce Health Cloud offers a robust and scalable solution for healthcare providers to manage patient data, streamline clinical workflows, and enhance patient engagement. This platform allows healthcare organizations to improve patient care, reduce costs, and enhance operational efficiency.
This guide is enough for a newbie to learn about health cloud, but still if you need any help Folio3 Salesforce Health Cloud Consultant are here to help you out in finding the best solution for your healthcare industry.
FAQs
Yes. The Salesforce health cloud has features that comply with HIPAA data security and privacy regulations.
Healthcare organizations use the Salesforce Health Cloud for patient data management, improved care coordination, and customizing the patient treatment journey. Additionally, they are automating healthcare through rapid data and AI advancement.
If you’re curious about what is health cloud in Salesforce, here is what Salesforce health cloud features include:
- Patient management
- Treatment plan creation
- Patient appointment scheduling
- EHR data integration
- Healthcare data analytics
- Secure communication
No. The Salesforce Health Cloud is not an electronic healthcare record (EHR) system. However, it integrates EHR systems using a platform for patient data management and interactions beyond standalone EHR functionality.
Salesforce Patient 360 is a health cloud concept that provides a unified view of a patient's healthcare journey using aggregated data from different sources.
Hasan Mustafa
Engineering Manager Salesforce at Folio3
Hasan Mustafa delivers tailored Salesforce solutions to meet clients' specific requirements, overseeing the implementation of scenarios aligned with their needs. He leads a team of Salesforce Administrators and Developers, manages pre-sales activities, and spearheads an internal academy focused on educating and mentoring newcomers in understanding the Salesforce ecosystem and guiding them on their professional journey.