Another Industry First from Curaspan: Synchronized Patient Management

March 7, 2011

by Thomas R. Ferry

When we created in 1999 what is now Curaspan Health Group, we envisioned and delivered first-of-its-kind technology to make patient transitions from one level of care to another more efficient. Our initial product, the eDischarge™ software-as-a-service (SaaS) application, now helps deliver tangible benefits with demonstrable results, like reduced readmissions, for 400 hospitals and 2,700 post-acute providers nationwide.

eDischarge was the first product of its kind to seamlessly integrate with pagers and hand-held devices and repeatedly has been recognized for excellence by the Health Care Advisory Board and by the health-care IT-research firm, KLAS. Our innovation continued, most recently, with the introduction of ReferralCentral and RideCentral, also designed to streamline patient transitions and generate better outcomes.

Now, we’re ready to cross yet another threshold in health-care IT by pioneering a new approach to patient care: We call it synchronized patient management.

Introducing Synchronized Patient Management.

Synchronized patient management is a fully integrated solution that connects hospitals, post-acute providers and payers with a user-centric view of patient-centric records, results and reviews. It will foster better collaboration among providers and payers and ease the increasing clinical, financial and regulatory burdens so much a part of health care today.

As a workflow tool, it helps automate manual processes, and as a communication tool, it connects users and departments within one organization with all their external partners. This approach enables everyone involved to make informed decisions in real time based on a standardized set of data that is meaningful to each function. Case management and care management. Utilization management and transition management. Payer approvals and denials. Even evolving models of care such as ACOs and medical homes.

Synchronizing the activities of all participants in the continuum of care helps manage throughput and related costs. Inserting more automation in workflow helps relieve the administrative burden and refocuses energies on patient care. And, perhaps most important, synchronized patient management resides on a shared technology platform. That’s where the data necessary to drive the creation and use of best practices and protocols for positive results is captured and displayed for easy access.

Get Ready to Get Connected.™

In our more than 10 years of working with leading health-care providers to build their patient-transition networks, we’ve already been facilitating the automatic capture and display of relevant trending data to improve outcomes. From readmissions data (by diagnosis, placement, provider and physician) that generates noteworthy results to LOS numbers, from placement time to PASRR completion.

Now we’re building on that proven foundation of innovation and excellence. We’re increasing the power of our secure, easy-to-use SaaS applications to incorporate payer transactions. We plan to close the communication gap between hospitals, post-acute providers and payers that so frequently jeopardizes quality in clinical outcomes and profitability in financial results.

At Curaspan, where we power hundreds of patient-transition networks today, we consider synchronized patient management a natural, evolutionary shift in health-care IT. And, when it goes live later this year, we expect to generate revolutionary results for our customers.

Thomas R. Ferry is president and CEO of Curaspan Health Group in Newton, Mass.

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