Huge cost savings is a significant benefit of EHRs, but they offer so much more to providers and consumers alike.

By Pam McDonald

Both the Center for IT Leadership and the RAND Corporation forecast $77 billion in annual savings to the federal government with a 90% adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems by physicians and hospitals. That would be amazing enough if that were the only benefit of EHRs, but they offer so much more to providers and consumers alike.

While helping reduce healthcare costs, CareCommunity’s innovative, web-based platform also adds seamless, effective solutions to myriad challenges of delivering healthcare to seniors across multiple settings. CareCommunity™ was developed by MatrixCare®, a Senior Housing Forum partner, to collect, aggregate, and display health, EHR and personal information of seniors as a robust and useful summary of an individual’s care delivery and clinical experiences over time.

A Long List of Benefits

With its half-dozen or so innovations, CareCommunity™ meets and exceeds the objectives established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) – the largest single payers for healthcare in the U.S. – for meaningful use.

MatrixCare’s EHR products are certified by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and innovations like CareCommunity™ offer a long list of consumer and provider benefits, including the following:

  • Enables quick, seamless access to a patient’s health information for more coordinated, efficient care regardless of the setting in which care was delivered

  • Displays accurate, up-to-date, relevant, and complete longitudinal patient information across health systems and EHRs

  • Improves patient outcomes and lowers hospital readmission levels with its team-based care delivery notifications to bridge gaps in communication, clinical care, medication management, and environmental barriers to care

  • Increases quality measures and enhances patient safety by delivering visibility into data-driven care coordination

  • Reduces costs by providing a longitudinal history of health information that can lead to reduction of duplicate tests or costly medication errors during transition of care

  • Allows for more reliable prescribing due to its ability to draw from numerous health settings the various medication lists and prescription history that is so essential to proper medication management

  • Helps reduce health disparities for population subgroups by providing transparent access to information such as provider-ordered services, care appointment dates and times, and caregiver information to improve care coordination with community providers

  • Promotes better clinical oversight and decision-making through a variety of clinical workflow tools, including:

    • Computerized alerts and reminders to care providers and patients based on patient-specific data elements, including diagnosis, medication, medical or treatment appointments, and changes in condition

    • Clinical guidelines and/or established best practices for managing patients with specific disease states

    • Condition-specific order sets and documentation templates

    • Focused patient data reports and summaries

  • Boosts provider efficiency and productivity, eliminating repetitive faxing and copying of existing health information, which encourages greater work-life balance for greater retention of staff

  • Gives providers a distinction and thus a competitive marketing edge as a differentiator in the marketplace due to the focus placed on engagement of the family and senior support systems

  • Raises patients’ sense of empowerment and engages their families by incorporating a sense of reciprocity, connectedness, and purpose that makes the user feel included rather than marginalized.

MatrixCare® – The Platform of Choice for LTPAC Providers

MatrixCare® utilized its 30+ years of experience to design and develop CareCommunity™. The purpose-built MatrixCare® software for tracking and managing resident care and administrative tasks is the platform of choice for over 12,000 facility-based care settings, including skilled nursing facilities, senior living providers, life plan communities (CCRCs), and home health agencies.

For more information, call (866) 469-3766 or, to visit CareCommunity™’s website, click on the logo below.

 

 

Click on the button below to download a PDF copy of this article: