IT Helps Smooth Transitions of Care

Care transitions often result in additional work for both the patient and the healthcare providers concerned. How can you improve the coordination of care?

Care transitions often result in additional work for both the patient and the healthcare providers concerned. How can you improve the coordination of care? How do you enhance the patient experience, reduce costly readmissions, and improve clinical outcomes?

As a provider of acute inpatient rehabilitation services and physical, occupational, and speech therapies, the Helen M. Simpson Rehabilitation Hospital and its parent PinnacleHealth have always stressed the importance of care continuity. As evidence of this, clinical team members at the 55-bed inpatient rehab hospital took on the task of redesigning the documentation that they use to manage patient care and rehab activities.

One of the goals was to team up for better patient care. Until now, documentation included valuable information about the patient but was not customized to address the key requirements of caring for a rehab patient. Staff realized that adopting highly automated documentation processes would not only support improved care delivery in the rehab setting, but also ensure that care is coordinated and efficient as patients move across the health system.

As a consequence, coordinating care needed to be included at every stage of a patient’s stay, including

• Post-acute care assessment
• Rehab admission
• Functional Independence Measure (FIM) tracking
• Therapy
• Discharge

For a more detailed description of how the stages were implemented, please click on the following link: http://sie.ag/1pfWmPz

Ever since bringing the rehab documentation process online with the Siemens Soarian^® healthcare information management system and leveraging its embedded workflow engine, the rehab hospital and PinnacleHealth as a whole have experienced a number of significant benefits. These include enhanced compliance, increased reimbursements, and improved patient care. Furthermore, patients and staff benefited alike thanks to a new automated documentation process.