Author Archives: Dinesh Raman

Provide uninterrupted care for your chronic patients during a pandemic outbreak

The COVID-19 outbreak has placed an unprecedented demand on health systems. Health systems and health workers on the front line are swamped by a plethora of activities related to the pandemic like identifying and isolating infected patients, providing care to them, ensuring it doesn’t spread to other patients, and themselves. Due to this, the delivery of essential health services which communities expect from providers is at high risk.

Focusing on a pandemic contingency plan and providing continued care for other essential health services are equally important. This will not only help gain people’s trust in the health systems but also reduce mortality from other health conditions.

Why shift to Preventive Care?

Preventable hospital readmissions are estimated to account for more than $17 billion in Medicare expenditures each year, and some of those Medicare costs are passed on to hospitals in the form of penalties. High medicare costs are a direct consequence of low patient engagement. During this time of the COVID-19 crisis, it is more important than ever to manage patients with chronic conditions to reduce costs.

One of the key strategies for providers to help their chronic patients is extending chronic care management to their homes. Providers should take a more proactive role in keeping their patients engaged in the process of care to manage their chronic conditions in a better way.

In a survey conducted by West, only 39% of respondents admitted they were only somewhat knowledgeable, at best, about how to effectively manage their condition. There is a serious gap among patients when it comes to managing their chronic conditions. Patients may not know how to check their vitals, how to follow a specific diet for their medical condition, health alert threshold, might not know their care plan, etc. Getting patients to understand certain metrics is important for reducing complications of their condition.

Chronic care management is necessary for patients because chronic patients contribute to 75% of hospital visits. In one of the articles, it is said that patients enrolled in Chronic Care Management Programs had significantly fewer hospital readmissions than routine care patients had.

How CCM benefit patients?

Patients involved in CCM services are healthier and happier. Patients get involved and engage in the management of the day-to-day activities in their care. Even during this time of crisis, they feel cared and see their care coordinators as a supporter, and they don’t feel alone.

How does CCM help your practice?

By offering CCM practices will not only see improved quality metrics but also high returns. It is great to get paid for something that is already being performed by clinical staff. Chronic Care Management helps increase your practice’s revenue as the CCM program directly translates into higher revenue. The more patients enroll the more the revenue.

Apart from increased revenue Chronic Care Management has several successful outcomes like

Better patient satisfaction and outcomes
Increased patients' compliance with medication therapy
Reduced hospitalizations and emergency department visits
Improved clinical quality and metrics
Reduced clinical staff time

Enrolling more patients in CCM programs is just perfect for providers to take care of their chronic patients during this time of crisis.

Are you looking for Chronic Care Management for your patients?

Partner with HealthViewX to provide Chronic Care management. HealthViewX CCM offers both the solution and end-to-end service.

HealthViewX Chronic Care Solution Alone

Automates and streamlines the entire process, and makes it easier for your staff to provide CCM services seamlessly.

HealthViewX Chronic Care Management Full Service

HealthViewX also provides end-to-end CCM services through our network of seasoned RNs and CMAs that enable you to increase your monthly reimbursements without incurring any additional cost of hiring additional staff or investing in technology solutions.

Interested in learning more? Schedule a demo and talk to our solution experts. Our experts will help you implement the solution or service, and get your practice started in a jiffy to provide uninterrupted care for your patients!

Capitalize on the Benefits of Telehealth to Ensure Care and Business Continuity Amid COVID- 19

The adoption of telemedicine shifted into hyper-drive over the past month, with virtual health-care interactions on pace to top 1 billion by year’s end, according to analysts at Forrester Research.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many barriers obstructed the lack of adoption of Telehealth. Cost/ budget, different opinions in consensus decision-making, implementation challenges, migration from the current process, upkeep of old technology, delay in decisions, many physicians seeing technology as impersonal, etc. were all some of the barriers to adoption. But now all of those barriers have dramatically collapsed.

Shift in care delivery mode amid the COVID 19 Pandemic

Hospitals and health systems everywhere are staring at a sharp slump in revenue. To stay afloat healthcare systems are exploring and evaluating a variety of virtual care models, and ramping up Telehealth adoptions. Their technology teams are working around the clock to deliver infrastructure support to facilitate Telehealth. Health systems are urging their physicians and patients to obviate the need for in-person visits, and instead use Telehealth visits to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

March Telehealth visits surged 50% amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to research from Frost and Sullivan consultants.

Virtual Care is the need of the hour:

Virtual care/appointments have quickly become one of the most important tools to ensure care continuity for patients while keeping safe during this pandemic. One of the Telemedicine providers has reported a spike in video requests to more than 15,000 per day. Forrester expert analysts estimate that virtual visits could top 900 million this year based on the current projections for coronavirus infections in the US.

Enabling Change – Telehealth into the spotlight

The care that used to take place only in brick-and-mortar settings can now occur digitally. Telehealth is stepping up into the spotlight and helping providers to ensure care continuity. Hospitals are enabling changes to assure care delivery, provide uninterrupted care, meet the needs of their staffs, and complement their existing workflows in the current scenario. It is evident that hospital CIOs should invest in Telehealth technology to help care continuity while also ensuring business continuity.

Telehealth is part of a larger digital transformation in health care. Telehealth technology benefits hospitals and health systems in many ways and some of them are enumerated below:

Improves patient engagement, builds capacity to expand access, improves outcomes & reduce costs
Increases specialist access availability and capacity, provides 24/7 access to care, improves access & fill gaps in care
Enables virtual care and virtual appointment
Enhances clinical relationships with partners and within specialty networks.
Implementation/expansion of value-based care models.

Apart from the ones listed above, Telehealth helps in point of access for urgent care, specialty consults, post-discharge management, health counseling, chronic care management, referral management, and many more.

Telehealth usage has expanded recently in many use cases. Some of them are listed below:

eConsult - Templated communications where PCP’s consult with specialists to send and receive information on patient care and discuss patient care.

Virtual Care - Distant specialists connect in real-time to a PCP or a clinical setting to deliver care.

Remote-patient Monitoring - Providers remotely monitor patients via connected/mHealth devices.

Virtual Appointments/ Video Visits - Provider connects directly with the patient via video to conduct the equivalent of a visit.

eVisit - Provider connects with patients via email or secure messaging to provide clinical advice or support.

Patient Acceptance of Telehealth Services - Among patients surveyed after their initial encounter, 97% were satisfied with the experience and would recommend the program, and 74% felt that the interaction actually improved their relationship with their provider.

Why Telehealth?

Health care providers saved almost $2,750 per patient when using Telehealth instead of in-person physical therapy when discharged after knee-replacement surgery.

Health systems that don’t address the expectations of their patients will be challenged by competitors and new market entrants. Telehealth helps to treat patients in a more effective way, and is an efficient way to use limited staff and resources. Telehealth will help reduce costly readmissions, improve clinical outcomes, and make healthcare services even more impactful.

Development or strengthening of health systems or hospitals can be leveraged across multiple sites by connecting physicians, specialists, imaging or diagnostic centers, hospitals, etc. Virtual care will not only improve the care quality and health outcomes but also will improve timing by eliminating travel and as well bringing in specialized care as and when needed.

Are you looking for Telehealth Services for your patients?

Schedule a demo and talk to our solution experts. Our experts will help you implement the solution and get your practice started with Telehealth Services in a jiffy!

Telehealth Bill 2017

Around 80% of older Americans are suffering from at least one chronic condition and more than 3/4th are suffering from at least two. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said, “Today is a big day in the ongoing effort to update and strengthen Medicare’s guarantee to seniors.”

The scope of telehealth has a variety of technologies and strategies to deliver virtual medical, health-related information and education services. The federal Health Resources and Services Administration defines telehealth as “the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and health administration.” This new bill will boost telehealth coverage in Medicare Advantage plans. Congressional budget office mentioned that over the next decade the healthcare expenditure will reduce by $80 million.

During May 2015, the Finance Committee formed the bipartisan Chronic Care working group which was led by Warner and Isakson. They developed a policy idea to address Medicare spending on treating multiple chronic conditions. The last Congress introduced the CHRONIC care act and again reintroduced by Senate Warner and Senate Johnny Isakson, along with the Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR). In May, the bill passed unanimously out of the Senate Finance Committee.

The standard for the federal government’s approach is set greatly towards telehealth reimbursement and the geographic location where the services can take place and the reimbursement process has its own restrictions (providing partial or no reimbursement) which were maintained by Medicare.

For elderly and disabled, Medicare program was introduced by federally administered insurance and to also help low-income individuals of every age, Medicaid was introduced by the federal state assistance program. This program’s coverage policies vary from state to state and even the telehealth reimbursement policy, related policies and guidelines associated vary considerably from state to state, says a report (CCHPCA). People with low income can be benefited with these plans and it offers a better health care coverage than the separate Part D plan and original Medicare. Mostly, dual eligible citizens are elderly and have low income and they need a higher cost of care. For the benefit of dual-eligible patients, the center of technology and aging released a note on incorporating telehealth-based care management solutions which has a better strategy to help them.

CBO (Congressional Budget Office) – The telehealth advocates are welcoming the CBO’s cost estimate (H.R. 3727) because of the cut in the Medicare’s coverage and reimbursement restrictions and also now there will be a more accepted standard of telehealth and telemedicine.

Telestroke medicare reimbursement will increase its spending by $180 million over the next ten years. Adding telehealth to ACOs will cost between $50 to $100 million which gives the ACOs more flexibility to use the recent technology.

For the chronically ill enroll, telehealth has been added to the Medicare Advantage plans for about $90 million, predicted by the CBO and over the next decade, $123 million will be added for providing access to the MA special plans for the vulnerable populations.

Without opposition – Chronic Care Act passed by Senate Finance Committee:

The Chronic care Act (Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic) was passed recently in the US Senate unanimously. S.870 (bill) was passed which includes a number of provisions that would give more scope on Medicare coverage and give more accessibility in using telemedicine.

Chronic care act benefits:

Accountable care organizations would be able to aid in telemedicine for all Medicare beneficiaries and services at home without minding the full financial risks.
19 million people in these plans would be delighted since they have more flexibility for medicare advantage plans to use telehealth.
45 million beneficiaries/patients in metro areas will get coverage for remote diagnosis of a suspected stroke. For now, the coverage is restricted to rural areas.
Doctors can visit the patient through the video to assist them with kidney dialysis and this includes all Medicare dialysis patients.
Until September 30, 2019, the demonstration expiration bill is extended and now the total number of beneficiaries for participating has increased from 10k to 15k which allows them to give practices for three years to receive shared saving payment.
For now, the practices are to be closed if in case they were unable to receive such an incentive payment in two years (consecutively)

For certain primary care services, ACOs will be allowed to provide incentive payments to the beneficiaries. There will be more options available for the pioneer ACOs, MSSP Tracks 2 and 3 ACOs for services in telehealth.

The new bill would allow MA plans to include more telehealth options, expand telestroke care, telemedicine for dialysis care. Adding more, Dialysis patients could conduct e-visits from home instead of an in-person appointment.

“This legislation will improve disease management, lower Medicare costs and streamline care coordination services – all without adding to the deficit,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT).

Telehealth Trends in USA

Use of internet for medical needs for health care related tasks, health information, filled prescription, to contact physician and also for medical insurance has shot up. 59% of telehealth services happens through telephone, where 41% happens through email and 29% happens through messages, says a survey by Rock Health. Over the past 10 years, telehealth activity has grown impressively in different service lines and there is an interesting growth rates and in volumes in different telehealth services. Delivering faster, better, cost less and convenient care is provided by the telehealth services but there may be difficulties in certain aspects like virtual visits, remotely monitoring patients for some providers.

Listed below are a few recents trends in telehealth:

Patient centred medical homes

Recently, PCMH have more positive patient experiences in advanced primary care.A relationship based system, partnering with patients and understanding their requirements by knowing their unique needs, culture, value and preferences. This method understands that the patients and families are the core members of the care team and also it is ensured that the patients have all the knowledge in regards to the care plans. Not only that but also with the help of the software we will be able to deliver our duty to the fullest satisfaction of the patients without using any hardware technology.

Telehealth applications

Telehealth is getting popular and one of the reasons is because of its virtual ability. Sometimes we may not be able to visit our doctor in person because of the time constraints or some situation where you are unable to leave your home. With the advancement in technology, now you can remotely reach your doctor and get proper consultation every day. With the help of your smartphone, you can install these telehealth applications on the go and reach your doctor anytime and anywhere.

A patient survey conducted by NCBI says that more than 50% people using health-related mobile applications. Another research conducted by markets and markets says that the mhealth solutions will reach $90 billion by 2022 and right now it is $21 billion.

Data Security in Telehealth

Security has always been a barricade for maintaining the data when it comes to telemedicine but not anymore. We are halfway through 2017 and all telehealth applications are making sure that the data is highly protected. Now we all know that everyone is accessing data with the help of applications and it is necessary to highly protect these data since it involves costs. Healthcare security policies which make accessing the data tougher by encrypting them or two-factor authentication for better security.

Types of diseases

There are few fatal diseases in the USA which is attributed to 75% of deaths. Among them, chronic diseases such as asthma, COPD, diabetes, heart failure, hypertension are in top ranks. Stats report says, one in every four deaths occurs due to such diseases. All these diseases require continuous monitoring that increases the workload of care providers which is the most challenging. To reduce this, health care system recently started focusing on promoting “self-care” for chronically ill patients so that physicians can only be spent time on supervising them with the help of telehealth technology. Telehealth helps physicians to remotely monitor and manage their patient health that saves both time and cost. A study states, patients have saved 9 years of travel time and 3 million dollars in travel costs after started using Telehealth.

Age groups

Problems in our body come along with age and multiple chronic conditions are directly related to once age. One in five Americans will be 65, says a survey report, also, 80% of the people who are aged 65+ will have multiple chronic conditions. These chronic patients have a high frequency of getting readmitted. It is important to take at most care for the aged people and now telehealth is helping these aged patients in different aspects. Starting from home health care to handy mobile applications, telehealth is highly successful. After employing health service, hospital readmission rate has decreased 50% for heart failure and 44% for other illnesses. Over 8000 patients’ who use ehealth service find it similar that of an in-person office visit and 21% of them says that quality of care of virtual visits is equal or higher than an in-person visit.

It clearly shows, how telehealth is playing a vital role in healthcare industry. A good telehealth platform must be HIPAA compliant- it should protect health data information, allows patients and provider to schedule appointments, and should support online chat. HealthViewX can assist you in providing a better chronic care management solution where you can easily automate your ccm documents and integrate with your mobile phones. With HIPAA compliant platform hosted in cloud server, HealthViewX CCM solution is highly secure.

HIPAA Compliant Cloud Storage

What does HIPAA stand for?

HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, sets the standard for protecting sensitive patient data. Any company that deals with protected health information (PHI) must ensure that all the required physical, network, and process security measures are in place and followed. It was formed in 1996 and, among other things, protects patient health information.

Who has to comply with HIPAA?

HIPAA applies to two groups:

Covered Entities: Covered entities are defined in the HIPAA rules as
- Health Plans
- Health Care Clearinghouses
- Health Care Providers, who electronically transmit any health information in connection with transactions for which HHS has adopted standards.
Business Associates: A business associate is a person or entity, other than a member of the workforce of a covered entity, who performs functions or activities on behalf of, or provides certain services to, a covered entity that involves access by the business associate to protected health information. It includes CPA, Attorney, Laboratories, IT Providers, Billing and Coding Services.

For detailed information, please visit the Health & Human Services (HHS) website.

HIPAA violations

HIPAA violations are expensive. Based on the level of negligence, the penalty for non-compliance can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation, with a maximum penalty of $1.5 million per year for violations of an identical provision. Violations can also carry criminal charges that can result in jail time.

Does HIPAA apply to Cloud Storage?

Yes, it does. When PHI is stored on behalf of the healthcare organization the cloud service becomes a business associate and thus must be HIPAA compliant. The law protects privacy, integrity, and accessibility. The Security Rule, which addresses electronic PHI, includes physical and technical safeguards such as audit controls and access controls. It also administrative safeguards such as data backups and security incident procedures.

Healthcare Industry – The Prime Target

The healthcare industry is one of the primary targets for cybercriminals. Stats reveal that a total of 113.2 million healthcare related records were stolen in 2015. Recent studies also say that healthcare has been the industry with the highest number of data breaches. And this stolen data could be used by the cyber attackers for many fraudulent activities such as stealing identities, procuring drugs, for filing fraudulent claims, pursuing treatment using another identity, etc. and these criminals even sell the patient records for anywhere between 1-5 dollars per record and complete set of medical records for more than $1000 on the darknet. The healthcare industry attracts the security hackers because medical records are lucrative to sell and are easy to hack.

Medical identity theft is increasing at an alarming rate. But the healthcare industry still lags in terms of preparedness when comes to implementing security protocols. So far in 2017, 79 security breaches, each affecting at least 500 patients, have been reported to the U.S. Health & Human Services Department. And this hacking trend is likely to stay or even increase over the coming years. Medical records contain lots of information about the patient like their full name, address, insurance details, social security number, diagnosis details, driver’s license, credit card numbers and a lot more. This information from the medical records can be used for fraudulent billing, prescriptions, etc. By hacking these information cybercriminals make a significant amount of money. According to NBC News, complete health records are going for $60 each.

Steps to be taken by the healthcare industry to prevent data breach:

– Plan sufficient budget for security purposes to curtail or minimize data breach

– Choose the right technology solution to protect patient health data

– Adopt latest technologies to mitigate data breach

– Most of all, ensure the solution you choose is HIPAA compliant

– HIPAA Education for employees – Make sure all employees know what personal health information can and cannot be shared with patients, caregivers and outsiders

– Ensure IT secures the devices it issues employees

– Get rid of the paper records once it is scanned and imported into your EHR

– Encrypt data and also hardware

– Take Identity and Access Management seriously, provide individual specific access to patient health records.

Cyber threats are increasing at an alarming rate. The healthcare industry is the prime pick needs to make smarter decisions to operate their business. The healthcare providers need to have a clear understanding of how industry regulations impact cloud adoption and what has to be looked into while choosing a cloud storage service provider. A cloud storage service becomes a business associate if they store Protected Health Information (PHI) on behalf of any healthcare organization. Also, cloud service providers need to sign a business associate agreement with the healthcare organization that specifies the vendor’s compliance with HIPAA requirements. As a basic step, healthcare providers should ensure that the PHI is encrypted in the cloud. And make certain that the policies, technology, and processes required are in place to eliminate risks.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a HIPAA compliant cloud service provider should have certain administrative, physical and technical safeguards to host your data. Here’s below in detail of what constitutes a HIPAA compliant data center.

Physical Protection: It includes limited facility access and control with authorized access in place. All the covered entities or companies that must be HIPAA compliant must have policies about use and access to workstations and electronic media. This includes transferring, sharing, removing and disposing of any electronic protected health information (ePHI).

Technical Protection: This requires access or control to only those who are authorized to access electronic protected health information. It includes unique user ID’s, user-specific access, emergency access procedure, automatic log off, encryption and decryption. Audit reports and tracking logs should be implemented to help track any security violation.

Technical Policies and Procedures: This should cover integrity controls and also ensure the ePHI is not altered or destroyed. It should also ensure any IT disaster recovery and offsite backup are key to ensure any electronic media errors can be resolved and patient health information can be recovered intact.

Network Security: This requires HIPAA compliant host to protect against any unauthorized public access of ePHI.

On February 17, 2009, a supplement act called The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was passed, an act which the enforcement of HIPAA requirements by raising the penalties of health organizations that violate HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. The HITECH Act addresses the privacy and security concerns associated with electronic transmission of health information.

Patient health records are full of personal information and are a prized target for cybercriminals. Hence it is essential to protect the patient data. The HealthViewX Solutions keep patient data safe and secure with HIPAA Compliant cloud storage and ensure complete security to protect sensitive data.

Increase Your Revenue up-to 65% With Referral Management

How Can Effective Medical Referral Management Increase Revenue up to 65%?

Referral management solution has come as an asset to the healthcare industry to improve care coordination, increase referral volumes and revenue, reduce readmissions and improve outcomes. Secure messaging is a critical aspect of the healthcare industry. Referral Management Solution allows the providers to seamlessly communicate for exchanging patient related data and for improving patient care through a secure network.

Technology is ubiquitous. Hence today each and every business is engulfed by technology. Just like any other industry the future of healthcare is also changing dramatically due to the technological advancements. These technological developments have brought in remarkable changes and have transformed the entire healthcare industry for good.

The U.S. healthcare industry has been facing significant challenges in various areas like care coordination, readmissions rates, poor clinical outcomes, patient leakage, revenue leakage, referral leakage, unsatisfied patients, a secured network for sharing patient information, etc. These challenges affect the behavior of both providers’ and patients’ resulting in poor clinical outcomes. Lack of coordination of care is a major challenge across the healthcare system. And the underlying reason is evident that the health care providers do not have a solution they need to link and work together effectively to improve the overall population health. All these are clear indications for the urgent need to transform. This transformation should improve access to the required care at the right time and in the right care setting.

Here’s how you can increase your revenue

#1 Increase the number of referrals:

Increasing the number of referrals will help your practice grow. For this, it is crucial to build a strong referral network and strengthen your practice. Retaining your patients within your referral network will eventually not only grow your practice but also increase your patient base. More patients mean more revenue. It is important to adopt a top-notch solution to ensure you have the best practices at each stage throughout the referral process.

#2 Reduce patient leakage:

Studies say, referral leakage for a health system can range from 55 – 65% [GG1] and approximately 20 to 40 percent of patients who receive referrals never complete them because possibly they were never scheduled or they became no-shows due to bad appointment timings or for even various other reasons. [GG2] One of the ways to reduce patient leakage is to provide better care and improve patient health outcomes. Patient satisfaction is one of the most important aspects that can reduce leakage. The patients need to be educated about their health condition and should be engaged at regular intervals and if required they should be referred to the right specialists at the right time. And this requires a strong referral base and a right solution that can manage the complete referral network efficiently.

#3 Better and Secure Communication:

It is vital to have a secure communication network for the healthcare industry. Effective and secure communication will improve the patient-provider relationship and overall have a better outcome. Without proper communication the patients can miss out on the care they need while the referrers lose patients and revenue. According to recent statistics, an estimated 25 to 50 percent of referring providers do not know whether their patients have completed their referrals and 50 percent of referring and specialist providers do not communicate with each other.[GG3] So simplifying the patient-provider communication process will ultimately increase revenue for your practice and keep the referring physicians updated of the referral pipeline/loop.

#4 Increase patient satisfaction by providing better care:

For any successful healthcare practice, it is essential to maintain a positive relationship with both patients and providers. And trust is one of the most important elements in the patient-physician relationship. It is imperative for physicians to have the required visibility across the care continuum to help their patients continue to receive recommended care. Also, patients expect their physician to have a complete understanding of their health condition. A solution with a lot of beneficial features can help increase referral completion rates. A satisfied patient can be retained within the network.

#5 Manage referrals efficiently across channels:

Providers need to manage referrals efficiently across channels of communication and integrate these records and data with their existing EMR/EHR systems to have a completely integrated view of the patient data. A unified view will give a better understanding of the referral pipeline and can ensure that referrals don’t become no-shows.

As patients keeping move between different care settings, many of the ills in the system can be solved by technology. Beneficially a lot of providers are realizing the importance to improve handling referrals and patient transitions. This move from fee-for-service to value-based-service has the potential to increase the importance of collaboration between providers thus improving the overall operational efficiency and referral volume. It adds value to the patients by decreasing the appointment wait time and receiving care when required.

With the help of the unique HealthViewX Referral Management Solution, the healthcare providers can keep a trail of their patient referrals throughout the care continuum. It streamlines the processes so that the complete information of the patient is under one roof thus making it easy for the physician’s access. It gives physicians a better understanding of the patient’s medical requirements. Improved patient referral process means well-organized care. A streamlined patient referral process ensures to supply the specialists with complete patient information. Additional features like the automated notifications alert the referred providers of new referrals in real-time letting them to quickly follow-up/check with the patient. With all of these, it has become more important than ever for the health systems to improve the patient experience. The solution as a whole focuses on improving communication among providers and patients and minimizes the chance for network leakage and helps increase revenue.

Hence today it is vital for the healthcare industry to adopt new technologies to have a unified view of the patient information, a structured approach to documentation and most of all provide better care for the patients.