An EHR the Clinical Teams Voted for Hands Down
Community
- Hospice
- Treasure Coast Hospice
- Martin, St. Lucie and
Okeechobee counties in Florida
- Slow admission workflow
- Unreliable, time-consuming documentation processes
- Lack of connectivity between stand-alone platforms
- Poor reporting tools
- Netsmart myUnity®
- Netsmart Referral Manager®
- KPI Dashboards
- Increased staff satisfaction
- Faster, more accurate documentation
- Better interoperability
- Increased data integrity
What other organizations should consider
Palombi had this advice for other hospice organizations looking to implement a new EHR:
- Do an in-depth analysis of your needs across all departments and stay hyper-focused on those needs during the evaluation process
- Require vendors to show how their technology will meet your needs
- Schedule demos and get input from your clinical team so they will buy in with the system you choose
Find out why Treasure Coast Hospice was looking for better technology and why they chose to partner with Netsmart
An EHR the clinical teams voted for hands down
About Treasure Coast Hospice
With a dedicated team of clinicians, social workers and chaplains, southeast-Florida-based Treasure Coast Hospice (TCH) has won national acclaim for the quality and scope of its hospice and grief support services.
Founded in 1982, TCH has grown to serve more than 3,000 patients on three campuses. This expansion, along with a continuing commitment to patients and their families, led TCH leaders to pursue a technology partner that would help them achieve efficient, person-centered care across their multi-site community.
The challenge: Inefficient documentation
Like all of healthcare, many hospice organizations have experienced a drop in clinician satisfaction linked to heavy administrative burden.
One of the ways TCH was able to get ahead of this issue was to identify and address key struggles they were having with their previous technology: connectivity, functionality and poor reporting tools.
“Some of the biggest challenges with our previous system evolved from having to use several different platforms,” explained Wenona Palombi, Manager of Healthcare Informatics at THC. “Our previous EHR was slow and clunky for end users to go back and forth between the clinical module and the back office. Sometimes forms would disappear before they could be saved, and documentation would be lost. Obviously, a system that’s breaking and failing affects staff.”
Palombi also noted their desire to have a business intelligence (BI) tool with dashboard functionality. “Our previous reporting tools were pretty lackluster. We wanted to have good data and quicker, more efficient usage of our EHR system overall,” she added.
The solution: One platform, all service lines
With staff satisfaction being paramount, TCH wanted a system that staff would use and enjoy. “Overall, all of our clinical teams voted for Netsmart hands down over the competitors because the system was easier and quicker to use,” said Palombi.
Partnering with Netsmart, TCH implemented myUnity electronic health record (EHR) to seamlessly integrate and manage their clinical, operational and financial processes.
With the capability to align to their unique needs and provide real-time, inter-disciplinary documentation exchange, myUnity has helped TCH achieve efficiencies that improve workflow and increase staff productivity.
The intuitive nature of myUnity enables end users to quickly and easily utilize the system throughout the patient lifecycle – from admission to billing.
In addition to myUnity EHR, TCH launched the business intelligence solution, KPI Dashboards, to monitor data integrity and drive improvements and efficiencies throughout the organization.
The impact of these new technology solutions helps TCH reach targeted business objectives, including:
Increased census
The timeframe for TCH to process new patients from the first point of referral through admission had historically been too long, according to Palombi. “We have a lot more competition than we used to in our market, so it’s important to get patients processed and admitted quickly. But you need the staffing bandwidth to do that, and if they’re stuck documenting for hours, manually scanning and filling out paperwork, that means fewer patients get admitted.”
With a new, user-friendly EHR and advanced interoperability, admissions teams can quickly access patient information and accelerate the intake process.
Improved data integrity
TCH also wanted a more robust quality assurance (QA) process. From referral source information and patient demographics to clinical documentation and reporting, TCH made it a high priority to have reliable data.
“With the reports and some of the dashboards we’ve created using the KPI Dashboards tool, we’re able to monitor data integrity and fully utilize the QA process, which has been incredibly beneficial in providing the best care for our patients and in reporting out accurate information to our compliance vendors,” said Palombi.
Overall, our clinical teams voted for Netsmart hands down over the competitors because the system was easier and quicker to use.
Wenona Palombi, Manager of Healthcare Informatics, Treasure Coast Hospice
