The continuum of care can be challenging from shift to shift, not to mention situations involving a variety of specialists. Even with a traditional EHR to record updates for each patient, problems can arise because the EHR contains siloed information. Penn Medicine attempted to solve this problem by designing a digital workflow system. Four years after implementation, 94% of available sectors are now using it, according to one data. study Detail the design, implementation, and efficacy of the system.
In other words, by 2020, Penn Medicine’s urban hospitals may have 159 of the 169 primary inpatient services that have voluntarily adopted this digital workflow tool.Its success led to the separation of CareAlign from Penn Medicine to become independent company. [In the study, the digital workflow tool is referred to as carelign.]
“What we needed to do was create a workflow tool that was designed well enough that not only was it easy to use, but people would think Use it,” Roy Rosin, chief innovation officer at the Center for Healthcare Innovation and co-author of the research paper, said in a statement. “This can be difficult in healthcare, where employees have so many priorities to deal with. But we believe these numbers show that we have succeeded. “
Philadelphia-based CareAlign’s system updates in real time, allowing different care teams to collaborate in one place without siloing information. In practice, CareAlign acts as a project management system for physicians, clinicians and nurses in all departments to collaborate on a specific patient health and care plan. Historically, this care coordination “to-do” would have relied on paper, email, text, and possibly even fax. As a result, certain items and care tasks may be overlooked or lost by mistake.
“Over 5,000 clinicians use CareAlign. When we surveyed them, 75% could point out that if it weren’t for CareAlign, they would At least mistakes will be made. “There is also evidence that CareAlign reduces readmissions by capturing more information. Every clinician’s goal is to provide better care and reduce errors, and that’s our goal. “
CareAlign sees itself as a continuum of EHR, secure communications platform and population health software. EHRs (e.g. Epic, Cerner, Allscripts) occupy space for fee-for-service to ensure patient care is managed and billed. Communication platforms like Vocera, TigerConnect, Halo, etc. communicate between parties in real-time, but not always in an organized manner. According to Airan-Javia, the third component is population health software (think Arcadia, Lightbeam Health Solutions, Innovaccer), which flags people and patterns in need of care.
“CareAlign unifies all of these ideas and voices in a workable, incremental way,” says Airan-Javia. “We don’t overlap with other big players in the space, they are our partners.”
According to Airan-Javia, CareAlign plans to enter the post-acute and outpatient care market.
“unless [the digital workflow solution] Designed with the end user in mind, technology can make the clinician’s job harder or more cumbersome. That’s why it’s often hard to get people to adopt,” comments Airan-Javia. “In contrast, CareAlign is designed to automate tasks that were previously manual and encourage sharing of information between teams. It reduces rather than increases cognitive load, so the data shows us that people want to use it. Unlike most healthcare tech, we don’t have to convince people to use it; most of the usage is growing organically. “
Photo: nito100, Getty Images
