In order to deliver quality home health care and ensure patient safety, patient care teams need a way to quickly and efficiently communicate with one another, and each team member needs reliable access to updated patient documentation. Home health mobile coordination harnesses technology to maintain accurate, accessible patient records and opens lines of communication among team members, all while protecting client confidentiality and remaining HIPAA compliant. Here are some of the major benefits home health care providers may experience from using a home health mobile coordination solution.
Accurate Patient Records
Home health care providers need correct, updated information about their patients to deliver quality care. Timely access to patient data facilitates confident decision-making, improves patient satisfaction, and prevents adverse events and delays in care. Mobile coordination equips providers in the field with instant access to patient records and a secure platform for documentation in real time.
Streamlined Workflow
Less time spent on paperwork means more time for quality patient care. Document Capture features allow staff to take a picture of a document with their mobile device, auto-enhance the image for clarity, and send it instantly to another team member. With Mobile E-forms, home health agencies can curate a library of customized forms with fields that can be filled in from mobile devices. These documents are then automatically converted to crisp, clear pdf files. Signature Capture enables providers in the field to capture signatures on their mobile device and immediately apply them to the appropriate documents. Together, these tools can simplify the otherwise tedious and time-consuming task of maintaining releases, authorizations, and other paperwork.
Exceptional Wound Care
Innovative technological solutions can also enhance quality of home health care when it comes to challenging tasks such as wound care. Careful and consistent monitoring of wound healing is foundational to quality wound management. Tissue repair is unpredictable, and wounds can change quickly. Wound Capture enhances the ability of home health providers to assess wounds accurately and track wound healing over time. Each time they take a photo of the wound with their mobile device, the app auto-measures the wound and stores that data along with the image. Care providers can add notes to each picture about wound location and characteristics.
A Connected Team
Along with clear and accurate patient records, care providers need a way to quickly and easily communicate about client needs and progress. Secure, HIPAA-compliant messaging facilitates coordination of care and keeps team members on the same page. An intuitive, easy-to-use texting platform makes it easy for staff to ask questions, leave notes for each other, and communicate physician’s orders. Customizable message threads allow providers to include all relevant team members in patient-specific conversations and to clearly label those conversations to prevent confusion. They can avoid overburdening staff with a multitude of messages that do not pertain to them and keep client information as private as possible.
Security and HIPAA Compliance
Mobile coordination allows care providers to easily and instantly upload all of the above — including documents, signatures, wound pictures, and patient-specific messages — to a client’s EMR. Patient data is safely stored and retrievable only by authorized personnel. This is in contrast to emails and standard text messages about clients, which leave patient health information vulnerable. HIPAA-compliant platforms incorporate components such as encryption and auto-logoff to keep protected health information secure. These built-in security features grant home health agency owners and staff peace of mind in knowing that their business is HIPAA compliant and that their client’s personal data will remain confidential.
