Author Archives: Vignesh Eswaramoorthy

Top 7 Measures That Can Help In Boosting A Hospital’s Revenue

Hospitals in the USA play a vital role in the healthcare industry. But in today’s economy hospitals in USA are facing a serious financial crisis despite the various revenue sources. This is due to the increase in the number of uninsured people seeking medical services, lower reimbursement rates from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), staff shortage, etc. Many hospitals are facing bankruptcy and some are eventually shutting down.

Why are hospitals in the USA facing economic recession?

The following are the few reasons why hospitals are facing financial difficulties

Lower reimbursement rates – Financial burden on the hospitals have increased due to the falling reimbursement rates from the CMS. According to the study done by the American Health Association, there is a steady decrease in the reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid services. When the cost incurred on the service is more than the reimbursement received, the hospital suffers a huge loss. Hospitals in the USA received only 87 cents for every dollar spent on Medicare patients in 2016. Hospitals in the USA received only 88 cents for every dollar spent on Medicaid patients in 2016. In 2016, 66% of hospitals received less Medicare payments, while 61% of hospitals received less Medicaid payments. With the increase in the aging population, Medicare and Medicaid services will become a financial burden for the hospitals.
Increasing the number of uninsured and older people – The increasing number of uninsured and older people implies that many hospital services will go unpaid affecting their medical billing cycle. This increases the hospitals’ debt, as the state and federal laws insist on providing care for all regardless of their financial ability affecting the overall healthcare revenue cycle. In addition to the increasing number of the uninsured population, people are living longer. Therefore, they need more care and longer hospital stays.
Rising cost of hospital equipment – Hospitals must have updated equipment to retain their patients. When hospitals change to new technology they incur significant cost on the equipment and on training their staff in operating the new device. There is no more long hospital stay because of the technological advancements. This affects the medical billing revenue cycle. Also, there is an increase in labor costs due to the acute shortage of registered nurses.

Top seven approaches to maximize profitability

Industry experts say that the key to maximizing a hospital’s profit is to cut down the costs and increase the reimbursements. Following are the top seven practices that a hospital can take up amid the poor economic conditions.

Cut down staffing costs by data-driven decisions
Cut down costs by managing vendors
Involve physicians in cost-cutting efforts
Partnering with other organizations
Partnering with local physicians
Attracting new physicians
Changing the quality of service

Let us look into each of them in detail.

Cut down staffing costs by data-driven decisions – Labor is the biggest cost for hospitals. It is important for the hospitals to have the right headcount in their facilities. Hospitals can employ staff on a part-time or hourly basis. This is called “flexible staffing”. The hospitals can adjust the staff strength based on the patient census data. The hospital management must also monitor the efficiency of the staff. They can review the average hours spent on a case and compare it with the benchmark value. The hospital must communicate about the efficient staffing benchmark throughout the organization. The hospital management must collaborate with the physicians, nurse practitioners, etc to meet the expectations. Hospitals must not have a blanket approach to layoffs. The hospital management must take a close look at their business before laying off employees.
Cut down costs by managing vendors – Hospitals can cut down supply costs by working with vendors. This will improve contracts and encourage physicians to take fiscally responsible supply decisions. The hospital management should not shy away from approaching vendors for discounts. Hospitals must have only the required number of vendors. The hospitals can also ask the vendors to submit purchase orders for equipment or implants that were not included in the written agreement with the facility.
Involve physicians in cost-cutting efforts – Hospitals should encourage physicians to keep a watch over the supply costs and other activities, such as unnecessary tests and inefficient treatments that may drive up the hospital costs. The hospital must support the use of products from vendors that are cost-effective but still of high quality, especially in areas such as orthopedic implants, which can be considerably costly for hospitals. In addition, experts say the use of protocol-based care can cut down costs associated with unnecessary tests or treatments.
Partnering with other organizations – During tough economic times, some hospitals can outsource or partner with other organizations for certain services, such as food and laundry services, clinical services, etc. By outsourcing certain services to more efficient providers, hospitals can share the savings with the service provider. However, hospitals must be sure to select truly efficient providers. Often, hospitals outsource services such as laundry, food and nutrition, information technology or human resources as they do not have the capital to invest in these. Some hospitals have also begun to outsource clinical services such as emergency room staffing, anesthesiology, etc to become more efficient.
Partnering with local physicians – Hospitals can join hands with local physicians and surgery center management companies to offer outpatient services. This reduces competition and also improves the hospital’s revenue cycle management.
Attracting new physicians – Identifying and attracting new physicians to bring cases to the hospital is another way to increase profits. Physician-owned hospitals can bring in more physicians as partners, while other types of facilities can recruit new physicians who are willing to visit patients at their hospitals.
Changing the quality of service – Hospitals can change or increase the quality of services they offer to be able to compete in the market. For instance, a hospital can invest money to develop their cardiac or cancer treatment centers which will attract more patients from different areas. New programs and treatment centers will also influence more doctors and nurses to join their hospitals. This may cost a lot but it has the potential to bring in higher profits because specialized care cost more money and attracts more patients who otherwise cannot receive this care in other hospitals.

Hospitals that focus on enacting these best practices are likely to see improvements in their profitability. Hospitals can also benefit from using today’s economic conditions as an opportunity to improve their overarching approach to business, creating a more sustainable organization in the future. Schedule a demo with us to know more!

Bridging The Gap Between Community Health Center & Specialists Clinics/Imaging Centers

Community Healthcare Centers and what do they do

A Community Healthcare Center (CHC) is a non-profitable, consumer-directed healthcare organization. CHC serves the underserved, underinsured and uninsured people, and provides them with access to high quality and preventive medical health care. Since 1965 Community Health Systems have provided comprehensive health and wellness support services to more than 22 million Americans, who otherwise would not have had access to quality care.

Community Healthcare Network receives funds through federal and local grants and payments from patients and insurance companies. CHCs must compete once every three years for federal grant funding and use these federal grant dollars to help patients pay for their healthcare costs.

Patient Referral Management in Community Clinics

Community Health Centers comprises of PCPs who offer primary health care services and related services to residents of a defined geographic area that is medically underserved. Many patients visit a PCP in a day. Community Health Centers do not have the facilities for giving specialized treatments or for taking advanced tests. So, when a patient requires any of these, the PCP refers him/her to the most suitable imaging center or specialty practice.

Community Health Systems mostly refer their patients out of the network. The referral workflow from the perspective of a referring provider is as follows.

The PCP sends the referral through the EHR/EMR to the referral coordination team.
The referral coördinator will study the patient demographics and understand the required diagnosis.
The team coordinates for insurance preauthorization to cover the medical expenses for the required treatment/services.
Based on these, the referral coordinator will find the right specialist or imaging center for further diagnosis.
After finding the right specialist or imaging center, the patient details are sent out as a referral.
Community Health Systems sends referrals through various sources like phone, fax, email, etc.
The referral coordinator chooses the source depending on the receiving provider’s convenience.

The gap between the community healthcare and specialty care

A referral process may become inefficient and ineffective if the community health systems and the specialty clinics/imaging centers fail to communicate. When there is no proper communication from the specialty centers/imaging centers the community healthcare network finds it difficult to understand the progress of the referral. Let us see it from different perspectives to understand why there is a communication gap.

From a referring provider’s perspective, the referral coordinator receives and processes many referrals every day. After sending out a referral, it is very difficult to follow-up with it manually. There are no effective and secure means of communication between the referring and the receiving providers. If the receiving provider or the patient fails to update the progress of a referral to the referring provider, he/she will never get to know what happened with the referral. Closing the referral loop becomes nearly impossible in this case.

From a receiving provider’s perspective, the referral he/she receives may contain incomplete information. Without vital details, processing the referral will be difficult. The source of referral are many but there is no single interface to manage it all. Missing out on referrals is common. There is no way of getting a consolidated data on the number of referrals missed and the number processed. Patient referral leakage becomes imminent if the referrals remain unprocessed for a long time.

From a patient’s perspective, he/she is referred to take tests in an imaging center and then meet a specialist to continue with the treatment. If the patient has to communicate back and forth between the referring and the receiving providers for incomplete information, history of illness, etc, it annoys the patient. It is frustrating for the patient to communicate between the two ends.

Referrals become incomplete, inefficient and ineffective when the participants fail to communicate and share timely information.

Guidelines to bridge the gap between Community Health Systems and Specialist Clinics/ Imaging Centers

The referring provider must understand the reason for the referral. The referring provider should also make the patient understand why a referral is necessary and what the patient can expect from the referral visit. Give time for questions and encourage the patient to clarify their doubts during the referral appointment.
When the referral coordinator does the insurance pre-authorization, he/she must make sure that the receiving provider covers the insurance policy of the patient. This will keep the patient better informed of how much the service will cost.
It is better for the referral coordinator to contact the specialist directly. He/She can give information about the patient’s current situation, as well as other medical records, test results, and documents to avoid duplication of effort.
Both the sides have to agree on the urgency of the referral and discuss the duration of the process, frequency of referral updates and the mode of communication.
Any tool that can give prompt reminders on the appointments, follow-ups to both the patient and the receiving providers can help.
After the referral reports arrive, the provider must check the results and recommendations. If the referring provider cannot understand the specialist’s evaluation, he should contact the specialist to understand the diagnosis better.
Referral is an important part of patient care but the patients are not obligated to follow-up with the specialist. If the referral isn’t completed, the referring provider must talk to the patient during the next visit to find out why. Documenting this can help in directing future referrals to the right specialist or imaging center.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution communicates effectively between the referring and the receiving ends. The timeline view and referral status help in tracking the referral. Prompt reminders will never let you miss an appointment or follow-up. To know our solution better, schedule a demo with us.

Why Should A Physician Share A Good Relationship With The Patient?

A physician attends to many patients in a day. But for a patient, the major concerns are about the severity of the illness, the quality of the treatment, etc. Patients expect the physician to diagnose the problem accurately and wants the best care possible. The ultimate goal is to get relieved of the illness as soon as possible. The physician must be interactive with the patient and it is important for the patient to cooperate with the physician to recover soon. So the relationship a physician shares with his patients is very important.

Factors affecting the physician-patient interaction

A patient wants to be taken care of and be able to frequently communicate with the physician. The physician also likes to engage with his patient and make the treatment easier but it is not easy always. So what are the factors that affect the interaction between the patient and the physician?

Physicians get busy – Physicians are always busy. Remembering the diagnosis of every single patient is close to impossible. He might forget what the patient is suffering from and will ask the same questions to the patient which can annoy the patient. The physicians being busy may not always follow-up with the patient. Instead, the physician will have a nurse to do that for him.
No effective modes to communicate – The system of care is still stuck with paperwork and following up or interacting with the patient is more of a documentation work than inquiring his well-being. There are no effective means to communicate with the patient. Following up manually is always prone to errors and leads to patient dissatisfaction.
Unable to reach physicians – Patients may always have to come to the hospital for even small problems as the physician is unavailable over phone calls or messages. It makes it difficult for the patient to get in touch with the physician every now and then.

These factors lead to care fragmentation and affect the health of the patients and also damage the reputation of the provider. Care fragmentation will ultimately lead to frustration between the patient and the provider.

Tips to strengthen physician-patient relationships

Following are five tips to strengthen physician-patient relationships,

Follow-up appointments
Get Feedback
Being available at all times
Staying in touch
Embracing Technology

Follow-up appointments – Scheduling follow-up appointments with a patient after discharge is very essential for continued conversation between doctor and patient. It can help in having a check over patient’s health and also improve physician-patient relationships. Follow-up appointments need not be a face-to-face visit always. The physicians’ can follow-up with their patients through audio or video calls eliminating the effects of poor communication in healthcare. A software to manage appointments and patient demographics can be a very useful physician communication strategy.
Get feedback – A lesser known tip for strengthening physician-patient relationships is by getting feedback from the patients. Feedbacks can be taken through a patient survey on the quality of care and treatment, phone calls, personal conversation with the patients, etc. Feedbacks can be useful in improving patient-physician relationship, knowing how good the service is and the areas for improvement.
Being available at all times – The physician must be available over calls or messages. This will make it easy for the patients to reach out to the physicians at the time of need. A nurse can also assist and bring it to the doctor’s attention if required.
Staying in touch – Though there are no appointments scheduled with the patient, it is always good to have a team of nurses following up with such patients occasionally. This will make the patient feel good about the physician and thus the patient-physician relationship will improve.
Embracing Technology – Technology is simplifying healthcare. With the help of a software, scheduling follow-up appointments, improving network connections, getting feedback from the patients, marketing a hospital, etc are made easy.

What HealthViewX solution offers?

HealthViewX Care Management Solution can help the physicians to check on their patients’ health even after hospital discharge. It results in effective communication within the practice and also between the provider and the patient thus improving the physician-patient relationship. The following are the key aspects of HealthViewX Care Management Solution.

Care plans to enable remote care – A provider can create a care plan for a patient depending on the vitals, treatments, measurements, etc that need to be tracked. The patient-centric application helps in logging data for the vitals specified in the care plan. If needed the care plan can also be printed.
Customizable dashboards to suit the need – Dashboards comprising of graphs and tables show a comprehensive data of the number of patients in different care plans depending on the patient diagnosis.
Scheduler to keep track of the appointments – An inbuilt scheduler keeps track of the appointments and sends timely reminders to both the patient and the provider. The chances of missing out an appointment are very less.
Audio and video calling features – HealthViewX Care Management solution support inbuilt audio and video calling features which help in connecting with the patients for follow-ups.
Patient-reported data – Patients can record data for all attributes in the care plan. Summary graphs and table data helps the providers in monitoring the patient vitals. The patient records can be anytime printed in pdf or excel report form.
Health device integration – HealthViewX Care Management solution can integrate with any wearable device like Fitbit, apple watch, etc. Hence the patients need not waste time in logging data in the application if they are already using wearables.

HealthViewX Care Management Solution provides real-time communication between the patients and the providers thus enhancing the relationship between them. Schedule a demo with us to know HealthViewX HIPAA compliant Care Management solution better.

Why is Documenting A Medical Referral Not Easy For A Community Clinic?

How does referral works in a Community Clinic?

Community Health Centers (CHCs) are private, non-profit organizations that directly or indirectly (through contracts and cooperative agreements) provide primary health services and related services to residents of a defined geographic area that is medically underserved. CHCs are high referral outbound centers, who send out a number of referrals in a day. A Community Health System has many PCPs who attend to numerous patients with different health problems. The PCP initiates referrals when the patient needs an additional diagnosis from an imaging center or a specialist practice. The following are the steps through which a referral flows,

Referral Initiation – The referring provider gives the details of the patient and diagnosis to the central referral coordinating team. A referral coordinator will study the demographics of the patient and the diagnosis required.
Insurance Pre-authorization – If the patient has an insurance coverage, the referral coordinator will validate the same. This step is required to find out which imaging center or specialist practice will cover the medical expenses.
Finding the right provider – Depending on the treatment required, insurance coverage, patient’s convenience, the referral coordinator will narrow down the search and find the right receiving provider for the referral.
Sending out the referral – After finding the right provider, patient information and the diagnosis details are shared while referring. The physicians can share the information via phone, fax, email, etc depending on the source that suits the receiving provider.

Medical referral history documentation

Referral history gives details of what has happened with the referral till date. The referral history is equally important to both the referring and receiving providers. Unfortunately, the receiving provider maintains this history through paper-based forms or EHR and it is not easily accessible to the referring provider. Documenting a medical referral is quite a challenge for the provider who initiates the referral. So what factors make it so tedious and challenging?

Physicians get busy – After the referral is initiated, the referring provider gets busy with other appointments and forgets about the referral until the receiving provider gives updates. Not to forget the receiving provider is also a specialist or from an imaging center who will also be busy. The receiving provider or the patient fails to communicate with the referring provider regarding the progress of the referral which makes it difficult to document the referral.
Lack of effective modes of communication – There is no effective platform to share patient’s sensitive data or communicate with the referring or receiving provider. The physicians are not available over calls or messages which makes the situation worse. There is a need for a standard HIPAA compliant application that the referring and receiving providers can use to share information which helps in referral documentation.
Manual effort making the referral process tedious – The referral process has manual intervention at every stage. This frustrates the providers and the referral coordinating team. Giving timely updates to the referring provider regarding a referral is too much of effort for the receiving provider. Documenting the referral manually becomes a challenge.

Why document a medical referral?

Patient’s need – The patient may come to the clinic at any time looking for the medical history of the referral. At that point, the clinic should be able to give the patient the medical referral history. So documenting a referral becomes a necessary process.
Clinic’s records for future reference – It is important for a Community Neighbourhood Health Center to maintain a history of its patient’s demographics and referral records. If the patient comes back to the clinic with an illness, these records will help in understanding the patient better and giving the best treatment the patient needs.
Direct future referrals – A history of medical referral records will help the physician in figuring out who responds quickly and who does not. The next time the physician sends out a referral, he/she will choose the most responsive and the most suitable receiving provider for the referral.

Information Technology to aid Community Health Systems

Information Technology is transforming healthcare to a great extent. Documenting a medical referral is easy for a healthcare based software application like HealthViewX. HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution simplifies the referral process by the following steps,

Referral Initiation – The patient demographics and diagnosis required are already in the application. The referral coordinator can create the referral through a simple three step form which includes insurance pre-authorization, finding the appropriate receiving provider with the help of “smart search”, etc. The receiving provider is notified of the referral.
Referral status and timeline view – With the status, a referral is tagged to, the referring provider can get to know in what stage the referral is. A timeline view shows a history of stages through which the referral has progressed.
Referral and timeline view reports – The timeline view and the referral analytics data can be generated as a report in any form chosen.
Referral closure and feedback – If the referral is completed, the status can be changed to closed. A feedback form is generated for the patient and the receiving provider. This can help the referring provider in making the referral process better next time.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution smoothes out the referral process and reduces the burden of the referring and the receiving ends. Do you want to know more about HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution? Schedule a demo with us.

Community Clinics Missing Out On The Progress Of A Referral – Know More!

What are Community Health Centers and what they do?

Community Health Center (CHC) in the United States is a non-profit entity comprising of clinical care providers, that operate at comprehensive federal standards. The care providers in CHC are a part of the country’s health care safety net, which is defined as a group of health centers, hospitals, and providers who are willing to provide services to the nation’s needy crowd, thus ensuring that comprehensive care is available to all, regardless of income or insurance status. CHC is a dominant model for providing integrated primary care and public health services to low-income and underserved population. There are two types of CHCs, one receives federal funding under Section 330 of Public Health Service Act and the other meets all requirements applicable to federally funded health centers and is supported through state and local grants. To receive federal funding, CHCs must meet the following requirements.

Be located in a federally designated medically underserved area (MUA) or serve medically underserved populations (MUP)
Provide comprehensive primary care
Adjust charges for health services on a sliding fee schedule according to patient income
Be governed by a community board of which a majority of members are patients at the CHC

Patient Referral Program in a Community Health Center

Community Health Centers constitute Primary Care Providers (PCP) who serve the underserved population. CHCs are high outbound referral setups i.e they send out numerous referrals. A patient visits the clinic when he/she is suffering from an illness. Depending on the severity, the physician might refer the patient to an imaging center for further diagnosis or to a specialist practice for advanced treatments.

Any Community Health Center will have a dedicated referral coordination team to send out referrals and take care of the community care coordination program. With the help of the patient demographics and diagnosis details available, the referral coordinator will go about doing the insurance preauthorization and finding the right imaging center or specialty practice for the patient. After that, the coordinator will create a referral that includes the details of patient demographics and the required diagnosis. Then the referral is sent to the relevant imaging center or specialty practice.

Challenges faced

The referral creation involves tedious manual work due to the following reasons.

Finding the right specialist/imaging center – The number of imaging centers and specialist practices is increasing day-by-day. It takes a lot of time and effort for the referral coordinator to narrow down the referral coordinator’s search and find the right one.
Time Spent – As the referrals are handled manually, a referring coordinator spends about half-an-hour to one-hour for a creating referral on an average and even more time in following up the same.
No Updates – After a referral is sent, both the referring and the receiving providers get busy. It is not possible for both of them to be updated on the referral progress. So the specialist/imaging center and the patient fail to update the clinic on the progress of the referral. This results in open referral loops.

Why are referral updates important to a clinic?

The patient’s well being – Any physician would always want to check on his/her patients’ health. So it is essential for a provider to want to know if the receiving provider accepted the referral, scheduled an appointment with the patient, the patient recovery status, or how severe is the illness, etc.
Referral loop closure– Open referrals are a result of the referring provider not getting to know the referral’s progress. The ultimate aim of a referral process is to give the patient better treatment. Closing a referral loop is very important because it indirectly proves that the patient was taken care of.
Data Analytics – PCPs require concrete data of how many referrals were converted to an appointment by a specialty care or an imaging center. It will help in analyzing who responds quickly and to whom the PCP can direct future referrals.
Referring to the right person – Depending on the progress of the referral and the patient’s feedback, the physician can get to know how good or bad the referral process has been. This will help the physician in knowing to whom he can refer and to whom he should not.
Schedule follow-up appointments – After the referral is done, the physician has to schedule an appointment for the patient. For eg: If the physician is referring his patient to an imaging for X-ray, the physician must be notified once the test is done so that he can schedule an appointment and give treatment to his patient depending on the results. Structured appointments scheduled in a well-managed referral system is a constant source of new patient revenue.

Be updated about referrals with the HealthViewX solution

The major problem with a Community Clinic not getting updates is that everything is manual. A software solution can solve this problem quite easily. HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution enables creating a referral in three simple steps thus providing a successful referral program. After the referral is created, it can be tracked with help of the status. Both the referring and receiving providers will be notified of the appointments, test results, treatment recommendations, etc. The system can integrate with EMR/EHR and can also coordinate between the referring and the receiving sides. Any referral has a timeline view which is common to both the receiving and the referring providers. In the timeline view, history of the referral can be seen for eg: notes related to the patient’s health, previous status of the referral, etc. Documents attachment and status change can also be done at any time of the referral process. HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution can always keep you updated on the progress of the referral thus simplifying the referral process and helps in closing the referral loop.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution helps the referring provider to track the referral progress. Schedule a demo with us and our patient referral management experts will guide you through our HIPAA compliant solution.

All That You Need To Know About Patient Readmission Rates

What is Patient Readmission?

Patient readmission happens when a discharged patient is again admitted to the hospital within a specified period. CMS used different time frames for research purposes, the most common being 30-days, 90-days and 1-year readmission. They define patient readmission as “An admission to an acute care hospital within 30 days of discharge from the same or another acute care hospital”. It uses an “all-cause” definition, meaning that the cause of the readmission need not be related to the cause of the initial hospitalization. The CMS set the time frame to 30 days because readmission during this time is a result of the care given at the hospital and how well they coordinated the discharges.

Why does Patient Readmission happen?

Before knowing why readmission happens, there are two terminologies that we must know to understand it better.

Index Hospitalization – The original hospital stay i.e when a patient gets admitted for a treatment in a hospital is “index admission”.

Hospital Readmission Rates – The rate at which a hospital readmitted its patients is a “hospital readmission rate”. In other terms, it is an outcome or a quality measure of care given by health systems.

Here are the top four reasons for patient readmissions,

Importance of paying heed to the physician – Mr. Hayden got admitted to a hospital for a knee surgery. The physician advised him to take complete rest. He did not listen to the physician and strained himself resulting in severe leg pain. Now Mr.Hayden is then re-admitted to the hospital. In this case, the patient should have paid attention to his physician’s advice.
Recovery Instructions – Dr. Adams is a cardiologist. He performed an open heart surgery on one of his patients. Since Dr. Adams was busy with many other surgeries on the same day he couldn’t give the patient instructions regarding post-surgery clinical exercises. He entrusts a nurse with the job. The nurse forgets to instruct the patient about the prescribed exercises. The patient then gets readmitted to the hospital complaining of chest pain. It is the responsibility of the specialist to give the required instructions to his patient and help them recover quicker.
Communication between the patient and the specialist – Mr. Mark gets admitted to the hospital for ulcer treatment. The patient fails to give his complete health problems to the specialist. The specialist does not probe much and gives the usual treatment. Mark is fine for a week after discharge but is then re-admitted for the same problem. It is important for the patient to share all his problems with the specialist and it is the duty of the specialist to understand the complete health history of the patient.
Continuous care to the patient after discharge – Dr. George is an Orthopedic specialist. His patient is suffering from arthritis. The patient needs continuous monitoring and care. The specialist is mostly not reachable over the phone for doubts. Here arises the need for technology, a software that can help both the patient and the specialist in continuous assessment.

Patient readmission risks

Readmission rates decide the quality of care given by the physicians. The CMS introduced the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 penalizing the health systems having higher than expected readmission rates through the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program. They specifically designed the program for incentivizing hospitals that had higher readmission rates of 20% in 2010. CMS reduced the reimbursements of the hospitals depending on the rate of the breach which was effective in reducing the readmission rates by 2% in 2013.

Ways to Reduce Patient Readmission Rates

A study presented by the Harvard Business Review found that on average, a hospital can reduce its readmission rates by 5% if it simply prioritized communication with patients while also complying with evidence-based standards of care. The following steps are a great initiative in cutting down the readmission rates.

Scheduling follow-up appointments – After a patient gets discharged it is essential to get in touch with him to inquire about his well-being. The appointments need not be face-to-face always. The physicians can conduct appointments through audio or video calls or sometimes even through messaging or e-mails. It will help the physician in knowing how well the patient is after the treatment or surgery.
Long-term relationships with patients – Patient engagement is the key to reduce patient readmission rates. Rehabilitation programs, good nursing team, home care, wellness programs etc can improve patient engagement and thus reduce readmissions.
Technology to play a vital role – A software to monitor the patients continuously can really help in solving the readmission rates problem in a cost-effective way. It also provides many other advantages and reduces manual work.

How can technology help in curbing readmission risks?

Information Technology is everywhere, so why not in healthcare? HealthViewX Care Management Solution helps the providers in monitoring and providing care to patients anywhere. It allows the provider to create a care plan for the patient. The care plan comprises many vitals, activities, treatments etc. The provider can select the appropriate ones and create a care plan. The patient who has a mobile application gets notified about the care plan. He can go about recording data for the vitals or measurements given. Both the patient and the provider can view the data in form of graphs or tables which will help the provider to keep an eye on the patient’s vitals. The following features help the hospitals in monitoring the patients easily and thus reducing the readmission risks.

Electronic Care Plans – Care plans to monitor patient’s vitals, measurements, etc. If required, it can also be printed and handed over to the patient.
Patient Reported Data – Patients can record data for all attributes in the care plan. Summary graphs and table data helps the provider in monitoring the patient’s vitals. The physicians can print reports at any time in pdf or excel form.
Health Device Integration – HealthViewX Care Management Solution can integrate with any wearable device like Fitbit, Apple watch, etc. Hence the patients need not waste time in logging data in the application if they are already using wearables.
Follow-up Appointments – The solution enables to schedule follow-up appointments and sends reminders to both the patient and the provider. It also has inbuilt audio and video calling features to support such meetings.

HealthViewX Care Management Solution offers a range of advantages and lessens the chances of a patient getting readmitted. To know more about our solution, schedule a demo with our expert team who will guide you through the process. Schedule a demo with us to learn more.