Axuall, Inc. declared that it entered into a strategic association and business alliance with University Hospitals to improve and test new mechanisms and workflows to decrease the time it takes to use qualified clinical staff and meet expanding patient demand. Axuall is a national digital network that allows clinicians, healthcare systems, and primary source institutions to yield and maintain authenticated credentials in real-time, all while satisfying regulatory standards.

Axuall and University Hospitals’ Ventures group started to run together in 2019 to recognize opportunities to leverage blockchain and digital identity to radically enhance the way the health system attracts, verifies, and uses clinical talent. Since then, the organizations concluded the first of three phases of their pilot in February of 2020. Consequent phases will maintain the full set of NCQA and Joint Commission standards and are supposed to be finished by midsummer of 2020.

As U.S. health systems strive to meet patient demand, developing delivery channels, and financial objectives, the effective deployment of their clinical workforce frequently becomes critical.

“Global pandemics, such as COVID-19, only underscore the need for a more elastic workforce and speed to deployment,” stated Axuall CEO Charlie Lougheed in a statement. “We are at the intersection of new advancements in technology and processes that, if applied correctly, can improve organizations’ ability to serve their communities, while at the same time increasing their operating efficiencies.”

The method of checking physician credentials often needs 3-4 months to finish, a manually exhaustive set of activities that limit care. Blockchain and digital credential technologies offer the capability to cryptographically assure that verifications started from authorized sources and have not been tampered with. This allows organizations to verify facts without pricey and time-consuming manual intervention. For this reason, blockchain is being leveraged to enhance healthcare administration, including workforce credentialing, revenue cycle optimization, and medical supply chain safety. 

“Any delays in getting clinicians permission to serve our patients put a strain on limited resources, and no more so than when we find ourselves continuously load-balancing in response to COVID-19,” stated David Sylvan, President of UH Ventures in a statement. “The time and cost to traditionally credential a practitioner wastes resources – it idles the provider; it stalls vital revenue-producing activities and limits throughput. University Hospitals is excited to pilot Axuall’s novel and potentially game-changing technology.”

During the pilot, the organizations will examine and measure compliance, physician adoption, workflow integration, and deployment efficiency gains. Axuall will perform beta testing with University Hospitals and various other health organizations later this year.