To make the most of Microsoft Teams for better patient care, users need to tackle some important operation issues or challenges.
Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform transforming how patient care team members work together and share timely data to produce more effective health outcomes. To make that happen, however, requires healthcare professionals to these operational and adoption hurdles with well-thought-out solutions.
Microsoft Teams Operational Issues and Challenges
Compliance and Security
To ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) Act and other regulations, it’s necessary to secure patient data and ensure all communications are encrypted and properly stored. The corollary to this – protecting sensitive patient data from breaches and unauthorized access – requires securing endpoints, managing access controls, and ensuring secure data storage and transmission.
Technology
Your technical infrastructure is only as good as the dependability of the networks in place and the proper alignment of the operated devices.
Accordingly, organizations must establish reliable network connectivity for real-time communications, especially in remote or rural healthcare settings. Microsoft Teams must also function smoothly and inerrantly across the tablets, smartphones and medical devices used in healthcare settings.
Also, many healthcare organizations still rely on legacy systems that don’t easily sync up with Microsoft Teams and, as a result, create silos that hinder effective communication and collaboration. While linking Teams with electronic health record (EHR) systems can be complex, seamless integration is imperative for efficient information sharing and workflow management.
Finally, because no system is perfect or immune to potential breakdowns or inefficiencies, regular updates and ongoing maintenance – including pre-emptive maintenance – are necessary to ensure the Teams platform remains secure and functional. Because this can be a resource-intensive responsibility, healthcare IT departments must be given the time, money, personnel and equipment necessary to perform it.
Microsoft Teams Adoption Issues and Challenges
Staff accustomed to traditional communication methods may balk at adopting Microsoft Teams communication tools. Overcoming this resistance depends upon developing and applying a well-thought-out change management strategy. Without change management, you won’t see the collaborative results you want.
Microsoft Teams is, after all, really about creating effective teamwork. That means coordinating among different healthcare teams (e.g., doctors, nurses, administrative staff) by efficiently using Teams’ collaboration tools and carefully planning and customizing the integration of Teams into existing workflows so that the process doesn’t disrupt patient care.
These adoption issues aren’t limited to healthcare workers. Some patients don’t have access to the technology or internet connectivity required for virtual healthcare services, and some don’t have the digital literacy necessary to use Microsoft Teams for telehealth appointments and communications with healthcare providers. Make that technology available with educational outreach to combat digital illiteracy to help increase patient engagement in the Teams environment.
Early-Adoption Team’s Issues and Solutions
Within the first few years after Microsoft Teams debuted in 2017, some of the early Teams adopters in the healthcare industry devised solutions that could fix several issues within the Teams platform. We describe the Microsoft Teams issues you may still encounter and some proposed solutions here.
VPN Constraints
To cope with VPN constraints, users can explore cloud-based VPN services to increase VPN speed or dispense with VPN entirely and access Teams through the cloud. To establish VPN security, employ split tunneling to control the traffic passing through their VPN server and ISP.
Access Lists and Outdated Groups
When faced with outdated access lists or groups not configured within Teams, you can use existing configurations – such as Active Directory, e-mail distributions, and EHR access models – instead of building new lists from scratch.
Governance Protocols
There is an urgent need to establish governance protocols, and often, there is too little time to address this priority. Healthcare organizations can impart essential Microsoft Teams instructions to an existing task force to create a template for Teams deployment. These templates should provide necessary answers (and follow-up decisions) to questions about:
- Team levels and owners.
- Document retention policies and team naming conventions.
- Guest access.
- Features and functions (such as navigation, messaging, screen share, and calls).
- Approved third-party apps.
- Data security.
- Deployment specifics.
Technical Skill
Since it’s necessary to compensate for the varying levels of employee’s technical skill and comfort, adapt Microsoft’s free training materials to customize training for each user group, including:
- A quick video overview and short demo for end users.
- Microsoft’s suite of training videos for department subject matter experts (SMEs).
- Accelerated learning pathway for IT teams.
Technical Support
Because the lack of effective go live and ongoing support can complicate adoption and make the lives of help desk staffers miserable later, try taking a tiered approach, where:
- End users watch the training video.
- Department SMEs offer follow-up support to end users who still need it.
- IT steps in to offer support to the department SMEs.
When Teams-related IT challenges emerge that your in-house personnel can’t handle, consult Microsoft’s online materials for guidance or contact your Microsoft Customer Service Success Manager or a certified Microsoft Partner.
Browser Configurations
While “golden” browser configurations might be incompatible with O365 and Teams requirements, if you run into this problem, do a follow-up assessment by developing a new golden browser copy. Test it to ensure that the standard desktop configuration supports Teams without hurting other enterprise applications (for example, electronic health records). Then, deploy it in sync with standard operating procedures.
Adoption Metrics
To avoid a situation without a sufficient focus on developing adoption and performance metrics to keep your Teams tenant healthy, there are several steps you can take, among them:
- Learn about Microsoft’s process for introducing new versions of Teams and adapt change control and new version testing processes to these updates.
- Focus on parts of the organization that are not using Microsoft 365.
- Require M365 teams to conduct routine assessments and report to senior leadership on adoption statistics, system performance, and security.
- Become familiar with Power Bl, the Microsoft business analytics service that deploys a simple, customizable interface to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities.
Be Ever-Vigilant About Microsoft Teams Issues and Challenges
No two healthcare organizations are alike in terms of how ready they are to implement Microsoft Teams – and monitor and adjust ongoing operations and regular updates. While Teams is a wonderfully efficient, reliable and versatile platform, keeping it that way requires healthcare business leaders to have the people, processes and controls in place to be alert to any performance challenges that could conceivably develop.
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