NEW YORK, July 22, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Tackling one of the most critical times in a patient's care journey, leading healthcare technology company, CipherHealth, is partnering with an increasing number of home health agencies (HHAs) across the country to reduce re-hospitalizations through enhanced patient engagement.

According to a study by the University of Colorado School of Medicine, roughly 23% of patients discharged to post-acute settings following acute hospitalization are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days. Almost half of these readmissions occurred within two weeks of discharge and could possibly have been avoided with proper outreach to resolve any immediate issues.  Lowering readmissions is even more critical now with the healthcare industry's recent shift to value-based payment models where reimbursements are directly tied to quality.

Patient engagement technology like CipherHealth's CipherOutreach helps agencies proactively address potential patient issues by supporting seamless care transitions and empowering patients to take an active role in their care.

Leveraging CipherOutreach, agencies engage with patients in between visits to ensure patient concerns are addressed before a readmission occurs. By proactively reaching out to patients throughout the episode with automated calls and texts, agencies can evaluate their recovery status and triage any issues to appropriate staff members if a problem arises. For example, an agency can ask their patients if they have any questions about their medications. Should any patient indicate they have questions, an alert is immediately sent to the proper agency staff member to call the patient back and resolve the issue.

"The typical home health patient has transitioned across multiple care settings and received an overload of care instructions, require ongoing communication and health check ins beyond the face-to-face home visits,"  said John Banks Powell, CipherHealth's Vice President of  Post-Acute Strategies. "Our patient engagement technologies help agencies support patient-centered care initiatives during a critical time in a patient's care journey."

Nearly four years ago, CipherHealth welcomed its first home health partner, the University of Pennsylvania Home Health & Hospice. Penn Home Health aimed to improve engagement throughout their patient's episodes of care.

"Our goal was to reduce readmission rates and we knew that if we wanted to achieve this goal, we would have to engage with patients to ensure they are on a path to a successful recovery," said  Katherine Major, Director of Caring Way at the University of Pennsylvania Home Health Agency. "However, we also knew that manually calling patients would not be the best use of our staff's time and we needed to implement a technology to help streamline this process. Since partnering with CipherHealth we have seen a tremendous impact both on our patients and our staff time". 

Penn Home Health remains a dedicated partner with CipherHealth. Expanding their program, the agency added different call programs to engage various patient populations. Not only has the organization achieved its goal of reducing rehospitalizations, but they have also been able to improve HH-CAHPS scores and save in labor cost.

To learn more about how CipherHealth's patient engagement solution is helping home health agencies, contact CipherHealth today.

About CipherHealth
Ranked as the top-performing vendor for patient outreach and digital rounding by KLAS in 2019, CipherHealth is a proven healthcare technology partner committed to enhancing communication and care team coordination throughout the patient journey. CipherHealth's suite of integrated patient engagement solutions empowers healthcare organizations across the continuum to achieve the Quadruple Aim.

SOURCE CipherHealth

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https://cipherhealth.com