Axuall Inc. has entered into a strategic collaboration and business alliance with University Hospitals to develop and test new mechanisms and workflows to reduce the time it takes to deploy qualified clinical staff and meet growing patient demand. Axuall is a national digital network that enables clinicians, healthcare systems, and primary source institutions to share and manage authenticated credentials in real-time, all while meeting regulatory standards.
Axuall and University Hospitals’ Ventures group began to work together in 2019 to identify opportunities to leverage blockchain and digital identity to fundamentally improve the way the health system attracts, verifies, and deploys clinical talent. Since then, the organizations successfully completed the first of three phases of their pilot in February 2020. Subsequent phases will support the full set of NCQA and Joint Commission standards and are expected to be completed by midsummer of 2020.
“As U.S. health systems struggle to meet patient demand, expanding delivery channels, and financial objectives, the efficient deployment of their clinical workforce becomes increasingly critical.
Global pandemics, such as COVID-19, only underscore the need for a more elastic workforce and speed to deployment,” Axuall CEO Charlie Lougheed said in a statement. “We are at the intersection of new advancements in technology and processes that, if applied correctly, can improve organizations’ ability to serve their communities, while at the same time increasing their operating efficiencies.”
The process of verifying physician credentials often takes 3-4 months to complete, a manually intensive set of activities that delay care. Blockchain and digital credential technologies provide the ability to cryptographically ensure that verifications originated from authorized sources and have not been tampered with. This enables organizations to confirm facts without expensive and time-consuming manual intervention. It is for this reason that blockchain is being leveraged to improve healthcare administration, including workforce credentialing, revenue cycle optimization, and medical supply chain safety.
UH Ventures President David Sylvan added: “Any delays in getting clinicians permission to serve our patients put a strain on limited resources, and no more so than when we find ourselves continuously load-balancing in response to COVID-19. The time and cost to traditionally credential a practitioner wastes resources – it idles the provider; it stalls vital revenue-producing activities and limits throughput. University Hospitals is excited to pilot Axuall’s novel and potentially game-changing technology.”
During the pilot, the organizations will test and measure compliance, workflow integration, physician adoption, and deployment efficiency gains. Axuall will complete beta testing with University Hospitals and several other health organizations later this year.
