Health systems are navigating growing demands with increasingly limited resources. As costs rise and teams are stretched, technology has become essential to helping people work smarter. But technology alone isn’t the answer. Many health systems and specialty care teams are discovering that more tools don’t always mean a more efficient process or better patient outcomes.
Approximately 25% of healthcare spending in the U.S. goes toward administrative expenses. At the same time, 60% of hospitals and health systems use more than 50 software solutions for operations. Yet more technology hasn’t meant less complexity. Care teams still navigate disconnected tools, siloed data, fragmented workflows, and manual handoffs. The opportunity isn’t to add more technology; it’s to make everything work better together.
Health systems want to better manage the specialty patient journey, but administrative burdens get in the way of more coordinated care. What they need is an integrated approach – one that improves patient experiences and outcomes by connecting workflows through technology and adding dedicated human expertise to serve as an extension of existing care teams.
Disconnected people, processes, and technology create barriers to better specialty care
When specialty care teams spend more time navigating processes and technology than focusing on patients, trust erodes, costs rise, and turnover climbs. It also limits teams’ ability to apply the clinical expertise and personalized attention that complex specialty care requires. This friction shows up in three core areas:
1. Disparate point solutions leave specialty care teams fighting cognitive fatigue
The rapid adoption of specialized software and standalone tools for tasks such as scheduling, patient intake, and remote monitoring fragments care delivery. Teams constantly toggle between platforms, manually piecing together a single patient’s record. This can contribute to cognitive overload among care teams, a factor in burnout, and it diverts valuable time and attention from clinical decision-making and personalized patient support that require human expertise.
2. Siloed data creates blind spots, causing administrative waste
Point solutions may solve individual challenges, but they often operate in isolation. When systems don’t fully connect, patient information becomes fragmented across applications, leaving specialty care teams without visibility into the full context of a patient’s broader care journey. This can increase the risk of redundant testing, duplicated work, and inaccurate reporting, while making it harder for clinicians to identify when patients may need additional interventions.
3. Manual handoffs increase workflow bottlenecks and team burnout
The care journey includes multiple critical transitions, from cross-departmental referrals to prescription routing to external coordination. Despite healthcare’s digital process, these transitions still rely too frequently on faxes, phone calls, and manual spreadsheets. The added administrative burden makes it harder for care teams to coordinate timely interventions and provide consistent, personalized support. Without an integrated model that connects the entire care journey, referrals or post-procedure care plans can fall through the cracks.
Specialty care must shift its focus from managing complexity to delivering care
Complexity comes at a cost: time teams could be spending on patient care. According to AMA research, for every hour physicians spend with patients, they spend nearly two more on EHR and desk work.
For specialty care teams, disconnected technology and fragmented workflows can make it even harder to see the full picture of a patient’s care. Patients with multiple chronic conditions, for example, often see several specialists. When any one of them lacks complete visibility into the patient’s full treatment plan, specialty performance breaks down. The risk of prescribing therapies that shouldn't be combined rises, potentially compromising patient safety and delaying therapy.
Solving today’s specialty care challenges requires more than another point solution. It requires a connected operating model that brings workflows, information and expertise together, giving care teams the visibility and support they need to act with greater confidence and keep patients moving forward.
Shields Health Solutions turns technology and expertise into action across specialty care
Shields Health Solutions’ integrated care model combines technology, data, and clinical expertise to reduce administrative burden, streamline care coordination, and provide specialty care teams with more time to focus on patients. Rather than relying on technology alone, Shields’ clinical pharmacists and liaisons work as an extension of specialty care teams. They translate insights into action, resolving barriers to therapy, coordinating care, and supporting patients throughout treatment.
That combination of human expertise and connected technology delivers measurable results. With average time to therapy in under 48 hours compared with the seven-to-10-day industry average, Shields’ integrated care model drives connected performance, alleviating operational strain on care teams while improving access to therapy, better patient outcomes, and long-term growth.