How to Use Microsoft 365 for the Healthcare Industry

Microsoft 365 offers a wonderful (but sometimes overwhelming) world of features. Depending on your industry, there are countless ways to utilize it. Microsoft can serve any business, from Teams and Sharepoint to Powerpoint, Excel, and Word.

For the healthcare industry, utilizing the Virtual Appointments app or the Bookings app in Microsoft Teams to schedule and manage appointments for your care team members can truly revolutionize the way your clinic or hospital operates. Quicker and easier care access for patients and healthcare providers is a no-brainer industry-wide. 

Expand the current healthcare experience across the patient journey with the ability to securely connect patient profiles, appointments, and data across your healthcare organization.

On top of that, Microsoft 365 apps can operate within HIPAA compliance standards. 

However, when it comes to the healthcare industry, we’ve found that many of our clients in this space have very limited time to be sitting at a computer figuring out the ins and outs of Microsoft 365 or considering new solutions that might provide better productivity and efficiency. But everyone wants those things nonetheless. So, what is the answer? 

Microsoft 365 is an amazing software product with capabilities that can help healthcare organizations streamline administration, facilitate collaboration, and serve patients while operating within regulatory standards. With different subscription levels depending on your needs, Microsoft 365 allows your team to collaborate remotely and in the office.

The answer is us: PK Tech. Yep, you read that right. We’re here to dive into the ins and outs of the many Microsoft 365 offerings and how they best fit into your unique situation as a healthcare provider. 

Let’s break down some of the best features of Microsoft 365 for the healthcare industry. Included are functionalities from Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Azure. 

1. Teams for Healthcare. Teams is a preferred messaging platform for countless businesses, with healthcare being no different. Teams is a part of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare (more on that below). The Teams for Healthcare app includes the following features:
   • Virtual appointments and Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) integration
   • Teams policy packages
   • Teams templates
   • Secure messaging
   • Care coordination and collaboration
2. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. In a nutshell, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare makes it faster and easier to provide more efficient care and help ensure the end-to-end security, and compliance of health data. Key functionalities:
   • Personalized care
   • Patient insights
   • Virtual health
3. Bookings app and Virtual Visits with Teams. The Bookings app allows you to track, manage, and organize your team’s appointments and calendars all in one place. Bookings allows you to create a Bookings calendar and add team members to it, build new appointment types, and create and manage in-person and virtual visits for your staff and attendees. You can also use it to schedule financial consultations, interviews, customer support, virtual shopping experiences, education office hours, and more.
4. Azure architecture and solutions for healthcare. Microsoft offers an array of healthcare specific solutions via their Azure architecture. These include:
   • Consumer health portal on Azure
   • Azure confidential computing 
   • Azure data share
   • Ability to build a telehealth system on Azure 
   • Predict Hospital Readmissions with Machine Learning
   • Clinical insights with Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare

Microsoft also offers helpful videos for utilizing their healthcare suite of features to enhance the productivity and modernization of your organization. This video is a helpful summary of the healthcare services available as a part of Microsoft 365.

With the ability to connect from anywhere thanks to Teams, collaborate and create in real-time thanks to OneDrive, design without formal experience with Microsoft Create, and more, there is so much that Microsoft 365 offers, it’s hard even to skim the surface!

From dentists to periodontists to chiropractors to orthopedic surgeons, PK Tech has an impressive variety of experience working in the healthcare space. If you are a healthcare clinic or organization looking for IT support in the Greater Phoenix Area, connect with our team.