Source: HealthcareIT Today
Every healthcare organization knows the importance of reducing hospital readmissions. It’s the perfect example to demonstrate how healthcare gets measured and can be improved. However, while most hospitals and health systems know their readmission number, many don’t know what it takes to reduce that number. In fact, much of the discussion about hospital readmissions focuses on what a hospital should do when the patient is sent home. While an important consideration, more valuable is understanding patient needs and how to address them when they are discharged to post-acute care.
Someone who has a thorough understanding about the connection between post-acute care and readmissions is Chip Grant, MD, Founder & CEO at Watershed Health. As a doctor specializing in interventional cardiology, Dr. Grant experienced an inordinate number of readmissions and became literally obsessed with the issue of readmissions. He recognized the need to better connect post-acute care to the hospitals and health systems, and subsequently created Watershed Health to solve for this challenge. Specifically, he recognized that post-acute care facilities and the hospitals lacked the ability to share patient data effectively and in a timely way, which was essential to ensuring quality patient care and follow-up, ultimately contributing to significantly reduced hospital readmissions.
In a recent interview, Dr. Grant shared his insights on reducing hospital readmissions. Crucial to the process was using technology to facilitate targeted and timely communications between post-acute facilities and hospitals. Watershed Health in partnership with Secure Exchange Solutions (SES), leverages the SES DirectTrust™ accredited HISP to enhance their healthcare provider network offerings. SES Direct, which enables Direct Secure Messaging, gives Watershed customers a simple and secure way to connect with their hospital network. In addition, Watershed uses SES Notify to equip hospital customers to meet the CMS Conditions of Participation (CoP) for ADT e-Notifications. SES Notify monitors hospital ADT feeds and delivers Event Notifications via the Direct™ Standard to healthcare stakeholders. SES Notify also streamlines provider alerting by identifying the provider’s Direct address via NPI matching to deliver the patient event notifications directly into their workflow.
If reducing readmissions is a priority for you and your organization and you want to better understand technology’s role in the process, you’ll want to tune in to John Lynn’s interview with Chip Grant, MD, Founder & CEO at Watershed Health.
