Explaining How SAP Creates Value for the Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry is currently facing change in every dimension. For their current and future business transformation, they need answers on key questions, such as:

• How do we move from volume to value care delivery while faced with continuous margin pressure?
• How do we meet the changing expectations of healthcare customers?
• How do we keep our healthcare employees engaged and empowered while dealing with the increasing competition for talents?
• How do we remove unnecessary costs and free resources to deliver better patient care?
• How can we achieve our growth ambitions such as expansion to new regions in a simplified, nondisruptive way?
• How can we overcome siloed information?
• How can we achieve sustainable and equitable healthcare while becoming more resilient in the future?

SAP supports the transformation of the healthcare business by providing innovative solutions for the main end-to-end processes across the value chain.

All these business processes build on the integration of three leading dimensions: Professionals, patients, and organization. This integration is shown in the following graphic.

SAP solutions enhance patient safety and clinical outcomes by helping healthcare professionals perform their jobs effectively. This, in turn, can promote the overall well-being and profitability of the organization, leading to improvements in both the work environment and patient experience. There is an impact on each of the tree dimensions:

• Business operations: SAP systems support the organization's financial health and overall efficiency.
• Healthcare professionals' needs: SAP systems address the specific expectations and requirements of healthcare professionals.
• Patient treatment: SAP systems underpin and support the processes directly involved in patient care.

With such an integrated end-to-end approach and latest technologies, SAP helps to achieve two business goals:

• Run today's business better

  • SAP’s latest technologies developments, such as using machine learning and AI, support data-based decision-making smoothly and in an integrated way.
  • The real-time view of a hospital at any level–the top and bottom lines and the margin and profitability from individual sections to the entire business–increases transparency and efficiency across the whole organization.
  • Preconfigured processes with support for industry best practices ensure standardization and consistency.
  • The move from volume to value care is enabled.
  • Overarching cooperation between systems increases productivity and employee satisfaction.

• Achieve growth ambitions

  • A modern cloud ERP system as a core for healthcare business operations simplifies business processes. It increases the efficiency and the transparency of clinic administration.
  • Through process automation and integration, costs are reduced and employees working with manual processes are relieved. The potential for further innovation along the value chain is enabled.
  • By counteracting cost pressures and creating a more attractive working environment, the healthcare workforce can be motivated. It is easier to recruit new employees and churn is less likely.

In the following healthcare landscape example of a ministry of health, there are three hospitals groups using the same functionality independently from each other in three different setups.

As you can see, the capabilities are duplicated in each group driving the total cost of ownership up. There are limited synergies of IT strategy, operations, and procurement between the three groups. Any innovation or improvement in one group has to be done two more times to allow the other groups having the same benefit. A shared services approach starting with finance, HR, and procurement could help ministries of health to simplify their landscapes, use synergies, and drive transformation in a cost efficient way.

Another challenge is the consistency of patient data. Master data management is required ensuring that patient A in hospital group 1 and hospital group 3 is the same. It is important that both groups use the same master data set and have full visibility on the patient record.

The following example shows how the setup can look like after establishing a strategic partnership between SAP and the ministry of health, jointly developing a vision as the future state and a plan to get there.

• Introducing a shared services platform allows the ministry to pool resources and provide all hospital groups with the same innovation platform.
• The IT strategy can be executed across all clusters at the same time, and operations and procurement are much more cost efficient.
• Innovations in the area of machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and others can be quickly rolled out across the whole group.
• Master data is more accurate as it is consolidated across all systems.

The Diakonie Nord Nord Ost is a merger of four nonprofit companies in the north of Germany, supporting children and young people, people with disabilities, adults in difficult situations, and senior citizens.

Play the video to learn why the Diakonie Nord Nord Ost decided to implement SAP solutions, what solutions they implemented and how they benefit from the result.

Explore more SAP healthcare customer stories all over the world - for example by zooming into the following graphic:

You can find more SAP Healthcare customer stories on the SAP Web site: Life Sciences and Healthcare Solutions:

• Cheerland Biotechnology: Digitalizing operations in the cloud for more business agility
• Bristol-Myers Squibb: Helping ensure efficient data exchange across U.S. pharmaceutical supply chains
• Novartis Pharma AG: SAP Innovation Awards 2024
• LetsGetChecked: Ramping up digital transformation to realize big efficiency and output gains, scalability, and growth
• The Brenda Strafford Foundation: GROW with SAP to Power The Brenda Strafford Foundation and Its Mission to Improve Lives
• Roche: Roches Quality Management Strategy with SAP Batch Release Hub and SAP S/4HANA Cloud(podcast episode)

Hint

We encourage you to explore at least three of the preceding SAP Healthcare customer stories and identify the points that are most appealing or most surprising for you! Share your insights by using the lesson feedback option on this page. You can also use this function to ask a question or share your own success story. Rate this lesson and a free text field appears with the option to enter text:

• Healthcare organizations face several challenges, such as margin pressure, evolving patient expectations, lack of professionals, rising costs, and fragmented information systems. SAP helps address these challenges by offering solutions to improve business transformation and increase process efficiency.
• SAP provides end-to-end solutions across the healthcare value chain, ensuring process integration of the three dimensions: Professionals, patients, and organizations - leading to better outcomes for all parties.
• SAP helps healthcare providers to run today’s business better by, for example, using AI and machine learning for data-based decision-making or providing real-time insights into financial and operational performance.
• SAP helps healthcare providers in parallel to achieving their growth ambitions by, for example, simplifying business processes with modern cloud ERP systems and automating processes to reduce costs and improve employee satisfaction, aiding recruitment and retention.
• The positive impact of SAP was illustrated with two customer stories:
  • A ministry of health example showed how siloed IT systems led to inefficiencies and higher costs. SAP’s shared services platform helped pool resources, reduce redundancy, and improve data consistency across multiple hospital groups.
  • The other example told the story of a social economy organization in Germany that implemented SAP solutions, driving better efficiency and innovation to improve care for various vulnerable groups.
• SAP has transformed healthcare operations across the globe, with various customer stories highlighting the benefits of digitizing operations, improving data exchange, and achieving business agility.