CyncHealth

CyncHealth is a Health Information Exchange (HIE) that provides member organizations in Nebraska and Iowa with access to reliable and up-to-date patient information. Their mission is to bring trust and value to health information technology by creating solutions for moving health data forward.

Like most businesses, HIEs have a need to track relationships with customer (member) contacts and maintain a centralized repository of past digital and verbal communication. At CyncHealth, formerly Nebraska Health Information Initiative (NEHII), this requirement is handled by foundational customer relationship management functionality (accounts/contacts/opportunities/activities), one of Salesforce’s primary strengths.

Unlike most businesses, HIEs like CyncHealth have the additional need to track complex interrelationships among member organizations and information about those members’ networks and connections. Many HIEs have found that standalone project management applications are great at what they do, but they don’t allow for the customization needed to manage per member connection-related information for ORU, ADT, and other HL7 messages. Large and often unwieldy spreadsheets often become the go-to repository for this information.

Salesforce, which is both configurable without needing code and programmable once you employ code, allows organizations like CyncHealth to layer custom database and workflow functionality on top of the core customer relationship management functionality.

CyncHealth seeks to provide optimal service to existing members while also looking to increase membership, and the HIE brought in J2 Interactive to assist with these goals. Below is a summary of the benefits that CyncHealth has seen with Salesforce.

Improved Member Relationship Management

With Salesforce, members’ organization, contact, and past activity data (phone calls, emails) are all in one central place. CyncHealth’s users have shared access to all the important relationship information for each member, creating operational efficiency by eliminating the time needed to track down specifics about member organizations and personnel from various silos.

Replacement of Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are excellent for many tasks, but it’s generally agreed that a spreadsheet is not a database. Some well-documented issues with spreadsheets for database-like tasks include:

• Limited validation on data entry
• Important data can be inadvertently deleted forever by a user
• Difficulty querying for certain information in a spreadsheet
• Inability to manage interrelationships among different sets of data

In the absence of a customizable database platform, spreadsheets are often relied upon to handle database-like functions—despite their limitations.

With Salesforce, CyncHealth was able to move away from spreadsheets to a robust database management system with a user-friendly front end.

Easier Organization and Management of Interconnections

CyncHealth team members can now manage and view the complex interconnections among members, networks, and connections in a consistent and structured way.

Possible interrelationships within a member account include:

• Network Affiliations
• Network Members
• Affiliated Contacts
• Connection Members

For example, since multiple members can share the same connection, Connection Members shows which members are associated with what connections.

A Concise View of Project-Related Data

CyncHealth eliminated the need for certain users to have to log into a project management system. Some users only need high-level information, such as the current status of a project. Full read/write access to all project data is more than these users need.

High-level project information for members is loaded into Salesforce, giving these users a quick view of only the information they need. This process also allows a quick look back at historical high-level project information.

Reporting and Dashboards that Facilitate Decisions

Salesforce makes it easy to create reports that display information across multiple levels. For example, there’s a summary report that gives a snapshot of members’ relationships, projects, and connection information.

Salesforce also empowers administrators and users to easily create reports that give them better insights into member data and activity.

Conclusion

CyncHealth has received a variety of benefits from Salesforce. Tracking member interactions, from first contact through onboarding, enables the organization to stop juggling spreadsheets and get on with the business of helping healthcare organizations get the data they need to help the patients that depend on them.