MedAptus Launches Automated Patient Assignment Solution for Hospitalists, Other Rounding Specialists

BOSTON, March 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- MedAptus® today announced the launch of Assign, the company's newest solution designed to simplify pre-care needs for busy inpatient provider teams. Assign was developed using rules-based intelligence to automatically assign patients to hospitalists or other rounding providers based on needs for continuity of care and other requirements such as ensuring patient safety, proper reimbursement and overall provider efficiency.

In an increasingly risk-based healthcare market, hospitals are working diligently to reduce costs for inpatient care.  The field of hospital medicine only continues to grow, placing hospitalists at the forefront of managing utilization while also delivering high quality care. Hospital-based clinicians are increasingly vital to ensuring that transitions of care happen effectively, often with patients that have multiple co-morbidities. Despite the hospitalists' important role in modern hospital medicine, few technology systems meeting their unique needs have emerged.

Due to lack of automation, hospitalists and other inpatient teams spend a significant amount of time on a daily basis determining which clinicians will be rounding on which admitted patients. The core issue is that on any given day, there is no set patient schedule, just a list of patients needing to be seen. Complicating this matter further is that the roster of available providers typically changes on a daily basis. Having heard this challenge time and again in the hospital medicine marketplace, and validated by existing Pro Charge Capture customers, MedAptus developed Assign as an automated, rules-based patient assignment product.

The manual process of assigning patients is typically based on a set of rules that are usually simple such as assigning a patient based on yesterday's coverage.  With an intelligent engine such as in the MedAptus Assign product, the rules can get much more complex and operate against a sequential hierarchy. "The first step in establishing a provider-patient relationship in the hospital setting is the assignment process. While most teams focus on providing continuity of care as much as possible over the course of the admission, there are many other factors that could and should come into play as patients are assigned each morning. These may include ongoing continuity across admissions, better accommodation of geographic rounding, and ensuring provider enrollment with the payer. Each is an important aspect of creating harmonious relationships and delivering patient-centered care," offered Ryan Secan, MPH, MD, MedAptus chief medical officer.

The rules engine in Assign can be augmented so that teams can more easily manage assignment requirements in line with their own needs. Some teams may choose to assign patients based on overall acuity, others may choose to do so by considering diagnosis.

"While the genesis of our Assign product was to simplify the process of daily patient distribution, that is just the beginning for this offering. While hospitalists are the core of the inpatient care team, there are numerous other professionals whose interactions with the patient impact length of stay, satisfaction and outcomes.  We are already expanding the scope of Assign to include other rounding physicians, nurses, case managers, social workers and so on. And from here we will introduce the capability of supporting communication between those team members and across settings of care," added Secan.

MedAptus will be providing demonstrations of Assign as well as its Pro Charge Capture app, practice-proven to improve charge timeliness, increase revenue, and decrease costs for inpatient providers, at the HM15 conference. This event, the largest national gathering of hospitalists, is happening today and tomorrow at the Gaylord National Resort & Conference Center, National Harbor, Maryland. HM15 attendees are encouraged to stop by booth 712 for more information on MedAptus' clinical workforce and workflow productivity solutions.

About MedAptus

MedAptus solutions streamline the process of delivering patient care. From simplifying pre-care clinical workforce needs, to automating administrative tasks at the point-of-care, our offerings provide customers with a foundation for improved operational efficiency, personal productivity and ultimately, optimized financial performance. Adoption of the MedAptus suite enables providers to spend their time where it matters most: with patients. For more information, visit www.medaptus.com, call 617.896.4000 or follow us on Twitter @MedAptus.

MedAptus Contact: Jennifer Crowley
p. 617.896.4030
Email

SOURCE MedAptus

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