After my many surgeries and outpatient procedures, I always received a call the next day asking how I was. But now a hospital in New Jersey is taking that one step further, contacting patients through a combination of phone calls, interactive voice response calls and online services, after hospital stays.
Like all healthcare providers, Hackensack University Medical Center (UMC) wanted to improve its patient-centered care and eliminate preventable readmissions. It’s always good for doctors to keep in touch with their patients after the visit, to make sure advice is being followed and prescriptions are being taken.
But to upgrade this process, Hackensack UMC turned to EmmiTransition, a new solution from Chicago-based Emmi Solutions that pushes information out to patients after their hospital stay.
"We've always tried to make at least one phone call upon discharge," said Louis E. Teichholz, Hackensack UMC's medical director of cardiac services. "Ideally, we'd like to make multiple phone calls, but the problem is in terms of resources. (EmmiTransition) gives us a better way of staying in touch."
The hospital – New Jersey's largest provider of inpatient and outpatient services – was one of four to test the solution, focusing on 100 discharged patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) for 45 days after their release from the hospital.
Those with CHF require monitoring, often done remotely, to track their heart rate and notify clinicians if intervention is necessary. In the past, these patients were often hospitalized.
The results were startling. In the recently completed study, “hospital officials identified 313 ‘red flags,’ or conditions that could affect patient outcomes, satisfaction and risk, and acted on them immediately, saving more than 600 hours and countless thousands of dollars had those patients been readmitted,” the report revealed.
Communications with the patient can now take place anytime, anywhere. Patients don’t have to be hospitalized – or wait by the phone. No one – neither patient nor doctor – needs wait for a return call. And any red flags are transmitted to care providers via e-mail the minute they're recorded. In addition, information is sent to the patient so that he or she can consult it at any time.
“EmmiTransition allowed us to reach our patients more dependably (and) get comprehensive reports and freed precious time to respond to patients who learned when to call us with issues such as swelling and weight gain so we could help them address these,” said Michelle Browning, a discharge nurse at the hospital.
Added Teichholz, “As we work to adjust from a volume- to value-based healthcare system, we know that interacting with our patients more often and more effectively – both in and outside of the hospital –– is the key to better outcomes and reduced readmissions. Yet, with time and resources in short supply, providers are struggling with how to do this. EmmiTransition proved an effective solution that significantly benefited both our patients and our staff. It identified red flags that would have led to increased readmissions – if not worse in some instances.”
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
