Healthcare providers and payors have common themes in their daily challenges. The topic of finding the right resource comes up all the time. From a simple “find a specialist” application that initiates immediate collaboration, to rules-based virtual visit queues, to match-making for shift-swaps, to targeting groups for user outreach.
As these conversations continue, certain technical concepts come up, along with requests for resources and samples. This post covers details about out of the box resource management capabilities, leveraging them for healthcare scenarios, and some technical snippets to get a jump start on your project.
Universal resource management
The Microsoft business application platform uses people, locations, and equipment information to help identify and connect the right resource at the right time. This powers out of the box scenarios like:
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service Unified Routing – skills-based routing of calls/messages to the right resource
- Dynamics 365 Field Service Scheduling – resourcing of technicians to perform services based on expertise and location
Customers can leverage this same foundation for purpose-driven needs in Power Platform like:
- Searching for a specific expert based on specific characteristics
- Connecting with people to swap a shift
- Providing searchable bio details that highlights skills and certifications
These capabilities are used in situations, both horizontal and industry-specific, without custom coding. From a technical standpoint, when you provision a Dataverse environment in your Microsoft tenant with the latest version of Customer Service or Field Service, the key tables will be available. This includes the Bookable Resource table (people, locations, and things) and related details like Bookable Resource Characteristics and scheduling information.
How do I use this in the Healthcare context?
As described in the introduction, Resource characteristics are valuable in large and small use cases. These types of apps leverage the following types of data
|
Source data |
Potential sources (non-exhaustive list) |
Target |
|
Practitioners |
Practitioner resource (FHIR), EHR export, data warehouse, spreadsheet |
Bookable Resources table (linked to Contact or User record) |
|
Practitioner skills / credentials |
Practitioner Qualifications (FHIR), practice management system/EHR export |
Bookable Resource Characteristics table |
|
Skills / credentials (available list) |
HL7 v2 Degree/License/Certificate valueset, PC80 Practice Setting Codes, practice management system/EHR export, state/territory listing |
Characteristics table |
How can I get started?
As a member of the Microsoft healthcare team, we have the privilege of working with many customers while they plan for proof of concepts, pilots, hackathons, and full-scale deployments. During these discussions, we see common questions and needs that apply across multiple customers and scenarios.
The following are a mix of frequently asked questions and the sample resources we link to following those conversations:
- What if not all resources are employed by my organization? In healthcare organizations it is common to have affiliated providers. The Bookable Resources support both internal and external people and does not require them to be employees. More details can be found on Microsoft Docs: Set up resources for Service Scheduling
- What are the steps for adding healthcare-specific Characteristics? There is a sample solution on GitHub, including an importable solution to try out in a dev environment: microsoft/resource-characteristics-health
- Where can I learn more about routing? The core concepts of unified routing and how they can be applied are detailed on Microsoft Docs: Overview of unified routing
- How do I set up unified routing? Routing of work can be configured whether or not you’re using omnichannel capabilities as detailed on Microsoft Docs: Set up unified routing
If you have additional questions, sound off in the comments.
Find this example and other posts with healthcare Technical Snippets at the HLS Blog.