It seems obvious that general retailers need actionable data to drive business decisions, but many healthcare organizations (HCOs) are businesses that rely in the same engagement and transactional information. Despite an increased level of regulation, HCOs need access to analytics information to make informed business decisions.

Capturing data in a way that does not compromise protected health information (PHI) or violate Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations is critically important. With the Health and Human Services Department’s new guidance for payers and providers regarding the use of online analytics technologies, it is more important than ever for HCOs to choose an analytics tool that enables compliant and actionable data.

1. An Enterprise Tool for Data-Driven Business Decisions

Adobe’s Customer Journey Analytics (CJA) solution supports generating insights from both digital and offline HIPAA-related interactions regardless of whether they occurred digitally, in a call center, a retail location or even a kiosk. To make data-driven decisions, HCOs require a deeper level of insight than what can be provided by non-HIPAA compliant tools.  Many analytics platforms record basic unauthenticated traffic engagement such as “1,000 visitors came to the website on a given day”.  In reality, most HCOs need actionable insights from their analytics package. 

Knowing how many people came to the website is interesting, but not useful or actionable for the business.

What’s actionable is being able to see who came to the site, what they came to do, if they were successful doing it and if not, why weren’t they successful, and ultimately what should the organization do about it?

Simply understanding whether a visitor abandoned the brand after exiting the conversion flow or converted in another channel is of significant impact. The former represents the loss of revenue while the latter is simply channel shift.  The decisions (and actions) an organization makes to address a lost conversion are significantly different than the steps to shift a conversion to a lower-cost channel. 

This is the difference between free or non-HIPAA compliant analytics tools and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics. Enterprise HCOs need a tool with deeper, enterprise capabilities and features associated with end-to-end data collection of digital traffic (on-site and off-site) and the ability to gain meaningful insights beyond pageviews and media tracking. This is what allows them to make business decisions based on data. 

LEARN MORE: PHI and Online Tracking Technologies

2. A Cross-functional Tool for a 360-degree View of the Customer

Adobe CJA is an evolution of Adobe Analytics allowing HCOs to gain insights from digital engagement and the end-to-end journey regardless of tactic or touchpoint. Remember the use case of being able to distinguish between a conversion that started on the web but ended in the call-center and a site-abandonment? Adobe CJA takes this to another level by creating a 360-degree view of the visitor. This includes not only digital analytics, but touchpoints like call center, retail, CRM, EDW, API, etc.  In addition, Adobe CJA is tightly integrated with other Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) solutions to support mission critical digital marketing capabilities including – customer identification (AEP Unified Profile), segmentation (Real-Time CDP) and marketing automation (Adobe Journey Optimizer).   

With the Adobe Experience Platform, HCOs don’t have to dedicate time, effort, and money to ensure different technology partner solutions work together. When organizations choose to utilize multiple point solutions that were not engineered to work together, it typically requires significant investment for the initial implementation, as well as ongoing maintenance to manually keep them in sync.  Choosing a single digital experience platform (such as Adobe’s Experience Platform) that ties analytics to the rest of the capabilities stack ensures each of the digital marketing tactics work seamlessly together – eliminating costly, manual, and custom integration efforts. Gartner has recognized Adobe as a leader and a visionary in its “2023 Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms Report.”

“Adobe has an extensive ecosystem that includes design and creative agencies, systems integrators, marketing and advertising agencies, and creative tools. This provides customers with many options to deploy and support the vendor’s products.” – Gartner, 2023

3. HIPAA-Compliance

Aside from deep analytics capabilities, HIPAA-compliance is what separates true enterprise solutions like Adobe from the rest of the pack.  There are no free SaaS analytics platforms that currently offer HIPAA-compliance. Some vendors offer a level of HIPAA-compliance by requiring the customer to implement the analytics package on their own servers – which is essentially asking the client to self-certify.  Adobe Customer Journey Analytics is one of the few SaaS analytics platforms which the manufacturer will sign a business associate agreement (BAA). 

A BAA is a liability document signed between a software provider and a client that outlines the handling and protections for PHI information within the tool and consequences for data breaches.  These consequences might include indemnifying the client for any/all PHI breaches, defending the client in court should any suit arise stemming from a breach, and even reimbursing the client (and potentially the end customer) for any damages.  BAA agreements can be very complex, and the nature of this binding legal document generally adds to the cost of the software licensing (which is why few non-enterprise platforms offer it). 

Despite a Higher Level of Regulation, HCOs still Need to Understand Critical Healthcare-Specific Engagement Activities which Require PHI Data such as: 

Open or special enrollment health insurance plan activation information such as plans, tests purchased, plan information, and demographics information.
Identity resolution engagement such as registrations, forgotten passwords, etc. (aggregate or individual).
Authenticated member engagement such as filing claims, downloading insurance cards, etc.
Patient engagement information around scheduling appointments, current conditions, payment information, etc.
Proactive outreach to certain segments to promote next best actions for positive healthcare outcomes.

These are just a few examples of the kinds of insights HCOs require to effectively run their business – all require PHI. Measurement of any of these is not possible without a signed BAA. Luckily, Adobe Inc. will sign a BAA for Customer Journey Analytics to measure all of these use cases and more. 

READ MORE: PHI In Web Analytics, The Do’s and Don’ts

Perficient + Adobe

Perficient understands the complexities of the healthcare industry and the unique challenges healthcare organizations face. Our healthcare practice delivers strategic business and technology consulting insights that help our clients transform with today’s digital consumer experience demands. This strategic guidance is then transformed into pragmatic technology solutions that improve clinical, financial and operational efficiency. 

As an Adobe partner, we bring the strategic imagination of an agency and the highest level of Adobe expertise and technical acumen to deliver exceptional customer experiences for the world’s biggest brands. And our experience is second to none. We are Adobe’s leading digital experience partner with hundreds of Adobe, Marketo, and Adobe Commerce certifications.

Have questions? Contact us today, and let’s discuss your specific needs and goals.