This news story is also available in Spanish.
“In the technology sector, if you are not disrupting, you will be disrupted. That’s why, as a health plan, we are front and center, collaborating with Salesforce to innovate and lead transformational change in the healthcare industry,” said Lisa Davis, Blue Shield of California executive vice president and chief information officer, at Salesforce’s Dreamforce 2024 conference in September.
Davis was front and center during the Healthcare and Life Sciences keynote, in a Q&A with Madeleine McRay, executive vice president of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Salesforce.
Sharing Blue Shield’s vision of a reimagined healthcare ecosystem, Davis cited the need to build new tools and capabilities for providers that enable them to spend more time with patients to personalize care, and ultimately, improve health outcomes.
“At Blue Shield, we’ve been on a journey the past four years to modernize our technology and data infrastructure,” said Davis. “By moving our data to the cloud, we’re improving our agility, scalability, cybersecurity — and enabling the key transformational capability of real-time data sharing.”
Enter Salesforce. During the keynote, Davis referenced Blue Shield’s collaboration with the tech company to create a platform upon which the two companies are building these interconnected tools and capabilities.
“The platform approach simplifies our architecture, unifies our data, and creates that seamless experience we are looking to give our members and providers,” said Davis.
Blue Shield draws capabilities from Salesforce products to power key business areas, from care management to marketing to provider experience.
Blue Shield and Salesforce have collaborated for over a decade and are now unifying experiences across solutions. Davis illustrated their success together through Blue Shield’s unique care management system, Care Connect, built on Salesforce Health Cloud, which brought 13 systems into one unified view and enabled near real-time data sharing.
“Imagine having Blue Shield care managers working with providers in real time to create the best care plans for members. It’s enabled us to address 17,000 care gaps in a short time and improve access to get the right care — at the right time,” said Davis.
Just one month later, Blue Shield has announced a new collaboration with Salesforce: Prior Authorization Reimagined.* The platform solution the two organizations are developing will streamline more than 20 disparate systems into one process and return care decisions to patients and doctors in near real-time, in most cases while still at the doctor’s office.
Davis noted the importance of collaboration within the complex healthcare ecosystem.
“It takes like-minded partners and a shared vision. Salesforce and Blue Shield each brought our strengths to the table, and together, we create magic,” said Davis.
*Testing begins in early 2025 with limited rollout later in year; near real-time prior authorization available January 2026; additional capabilities to follow.
The full Dreamforce keynote with Davis and McRay is available to watch here