Waiting for CMS to report and rate a Center based on its MDS submissions eliminates the opportunity to make point-of-care changes.
Imagine a world where an electronic health record (EHR) could tell a provider, in real time, that a patient is struggling. Or a system that would alert the administrator if something was happening that might jeopardize the center’s Five-Star Quality Rating. What if he or she knew the facility’s readmission rates and those of its competition?
What would this mean to patient care? Census? Reimbursement?
It’s Coming…
This function is slowly beginning to emerge. The data exist; it is just a matter of creating the algorithms that connect the dots. For the country’s health care system, leveraging a more predictive approach to care management should result in a dramatic decrease in the amount of money spent each year.
Now think of this from a hospital’s perspective. If a health system could access live, real-time data on all of its discharged patients now residing in skilled nursing centers, it could identify providers capable of driving down readmission rates, achieving benchmarks for functional improvement, and holding themselves accountable.
So what’s the holdup? The challenge lies in the silo nature of the U.S. health system’s EHRs.
Hospitals use a software platform specifically designed for their needs, while skilled nursing centers use a completely different product. Home health has yet another solution. And within each of these stops along the health care continuum there are multiple software companies with myriad applications. None of these solutions are integrated with one another. As a result, providers have all become dependent on outdated, inconsistent reporting from a national or state entity.
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