The Connection Between Network Optimization and Improved Patient Outcomes

In healthcare, a network’s performance is crucial to success. Just as consumers expect new levels of transparency in ride-hailing and food delivery, health systems need the ability to measure their networks’ performance. Tracking specialist referral patterns are among the lowest-hanging fruits for a healthcare network strategy team. It allows them to incentivize primary care physicians to make high-quality, cost-effective specialist referrals.

Improved Patient Outcomes

Network optimization involves identifying and addressing bottlenecks that limit network performance. The goal is to improve network reliability, security, speed, and usability. This process is a continuous effort as networks grow and evolve. For example, a healthcare network optimization strategy might use SNA to identify and target physicians with low communication network centrality who may be less likely to adopt EMR systems. The strategy could include organizational arrangements and processes encouraging more communication among those physicians. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be effectively delivered and received over a network in a given period. A high bandwidth will allow multiple users to access applications and content simultaneously without causing any slowdowns or loss of data integrity. It is another essential factor to consider when designing a network architecture. The ultimate objective is building an ideal network supporting current and future business requirements. It is accomplished by continuously monitoring and tuning the network.

Increased Patient Loyalty

In the health insurance industry, where member loyalty is critical to a payer’s bottom line, optimizing provider networks is the top way to increase patient loyalty. By implementing network performance metrics, provider network optimization, provider network adequacy, healthcare organizations can remove the friction of choosing between in-network physicians and specialists and outside providers, keeping patients at their organization for all their care needs. To measure network performance, many IT teams track vital metrics such as latency and round-trip time (RTT), which indicate how long data travels between network devices and the quality of the transmitted information. Another essential metric is jitter, which measures the variation in network delay caused by traffic bottlenecks.

To explore how a healthcare organization’s network structure influences collaboration, researchers conducted an SNA intervention that assigned nurse leaders to project-based work groups with low pre-existing connections. The results showed increased network density, decreased average path length, and more significant ties between nurses who worked together in different hospital areas.

Enhanced Revenue

Businesses with a finely tuned network have the advantage in a digital landscape where speed, agility, and responsiveness are critical. Continuous network optimization ensures that networks can support the growing demands of remote work and evolving customer expectations while delivering the speed, reliability, and security required to thrive in today’s competitive business environment. Payers who utilize best practices to optimize their provider network can improve the quality of care and experience while reducing costs. Ensuring that attributed physicians are part of the preferred network—a group of providers chosen for their ownership, cost and quality performance, or other factors—is essential.

Another critical aspect of optimizing the network is enabling access to rich data. By converting data into actionable intelligence, payers can better understand and negotiate the proper contracts to help their networks succeed in value-based care (VBC). This approach allows them to maximize quality outcomes and deliver a high-performance provider network.

Enhanced Referrals

Many health systems focus on improving referrals by reducing leakage rates (patients seeking care outside the system). While this is an important strategic objective, such efforts are limited to comprehensive data insights and accurate methodology. In an era of increasing cost pressures, health systems need to improve their physician alignment and network integrity in ways that drive both patient volume and value. It is impossible with current cost accounting practices, which equate low costs with high performance. Network optimization aims to increase network reliability and speed to support business activities that require 24/7 access and real-time usage of bandwidth-intensive applications. It includes monitoring peak traffic usage, identifying network hotspots, and ensuring latency and RTT are below business requirements. It also ensures security measures are intact. Ultimately, network optimization provides a positive end-user experience that improves productivity and enables a more productive work environment. It translates into a competitive advantage for the organization.