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http://www.kinnser.com/blog/index.cfm/2010/7/22/how-do-you-use-computers-at-your-home-health-agency
How do you use computers in home health?
July 27th, 2010 by canderson
The Procura Home Health Application
June 22nd, 2010 by candersonLaura and I spent some time with Kathy Pruitt looking at the Home Health Application by Procura.
The Procura Home Health app is for medium to large home health agencies with a census over 150. Procura provides software to meet the needs of Home Health, Private Duty and Community Care organizations.
Procura is a BIG app, with lots of choices. Kathy did a great job asking the right questions to ensure we saw what we wanted and weren’t overwhelmed by the rest!
Procura falls in the mid-range for implementation costs at $25,000 to $40,000 depending on number of users, how many business lines, locations and specific applications purchased by the agency. The monthly fee for the hosted model is per user/per month at $335 each. The software also accommodates a server client environment as well and pricing can be provided for that. There is a telephony system as well so not all your field staff are “users”, your aides and contractors may be on telephony instead of the POC app for instance.
Procura has licenses with VNA First for care paths/plans or you can build or load your own. They are licensed with First Data Bank for meds.
Part of the implementation costs includes a business process review which is a very personalized touch to implementation. Procura goes to great lengths to discover your current processes and how to gently convert them into automated, electronic processes.
Setting up the payors in Procura seemed much more robust than other apps I’ve used, and can be edited down to the patient level for co-pays, Medicare Secondary payor, etc.
Like most of the apps we have reviewed, Procura has a built in encrypted email for communication between team members.
Integrated workflow!! Now this takes some time in the beginning, just figuring out what you think your workflow should be. For instance, after a clinician completes an OASIS, it goes to QA, then it goes to billing, or wherever or whoever you specify. I confirmed with Kathy that agencies would not be overwhelmed with choice and that Procura would share workflows that have worked for other customers! It’s one of those options (like setting up all your bills on your banking website) that are well worth the initial set up.
Medicare Eligibility can be checked across the census as frequently as you want. You know how we love that!
Two of my favorite features are 1. Best Route: So simple, it’s a feature that allows a clinician to put in all the patients she is going to see in a day and recommends where she go first, second, third, etc based on “best route” (not to replace clinical judgment of course, just a nifty tool).
Last but not least, Procura has a built-in CRM. That’s a “Customer-Relationship-Manager” application. Home Health has to have the marketing engine humming now a day to compete with increased numbers of providers for smaller profit margins.
The CRM allows you to analyze where your referrals are coming from, and maintain good contact and feedback with them! This is the first application that I’ve seen with the built in CRM.
We will be discussing how to manage marketing efforts inthe very near future on this blog as it is becoming a real hot button issue for our customers as well.
Meanwhile, if you have had experience using Procura, please take a moment to leave some feedback for the other shoppers out there. I know they will appreciate it. (All replies are moderated, and can be anonymous if you desire).
If you haven’t seen Procura, go to www.goprocura.com
or email Kathy Pruitt at kpruitt@goprocura.com
A Review of Healthwyse
June 3rd, 2010 by candersonGreat demo by Kathleen Plath and her colleagues at HealthWyse yesterday.
HealthWyse has a full menu of options and services. They have an application for Home Health, Hospice, and Private Duty. There is also options for coding, a physician portal, and a more robust report engine.
They have a hybrid of web-based and local data, but do not require you to purchase and maintain a server in order to host your data locally. Your data is backed up on a desktop installation and synchs every 15 minutes with your data located at HealthWyse secure data center.
This is a great solution for areas without great internet connectivity or whose field devices take awhile to access the web. The application can be used by clinicians with or without internet.
While I appreciate that HealthWyse knows who their customer is, and it is NOT a start-up agency, HealthWyse has recently introduced a StartWyse option to bring their complete paperless solution to the small agency market. They identify a good candidate for the StartWyse option as having 100 -150 patients on census, less than 25 clinicians, and one line of business.
Agencies with more than 25 clinicians, more than one line of business, and/or more than one location would choose the regular HealthWyse implementation.
Implementation can be completed in around 10 weeks for the Startwyse option.
If you’ve read any of the previous reviews you will know how much I appreciate Medicare Eligibility Checking. HealthWyse users can select one to all patients for eligibility checks as frequently as you like. Any of you who have submitted a final bill only to find out that your patient has signed up for a managed Medicare plan knows the value of being able to check eligibility on your entire census throughout the episode!
While the implementation costs are higher than many of the other solutions reviewed here (over $25,000 depending on options), it should be considered that the solution is completely compliance driven and has a “HealthWyse Clinical Assistant” TM (thats a trademark sign–I don’t know how to make it on wordpress!)feature that prompts clinicians and managers to follow industry best practice. This may be an excellent solution for agencies with little industry experience.
While the implementation costs are on the high side, (they spend a lot of resources on building the back end, so the front end is more user friendly) the monthly costs are comparable to some other applications reviewed here at approx $1000-$3000 per month.
Contact Kathleen Plath at kplath@healthwyse.com and visit them at www. healthwyse.com
Share Your Software Shopping/Purchase Experience
June 1st, 2010 by candersonPlease take a moment to respond to a short survey monkey about your shopping experiences at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/82TJ6ZN
Or feel free to write about your experience in the reply box below.
We’ll aggregate and post responses here. Subscribe to the blog so you won’t miss it!
Select Data: Solutions on Paper, on Laptop and Coding Service.
May 16th, 2010 by candersonSelectData has a paper (scannable forms) solution, a laptop solution and a hybrid of both. Meaning, you can put some of your staff on laptops and maintain some staff on paper without sacrificing the electronic medical record!
However, what I find really valuable about SelectData is their Coding Service. (And you don’t need to use their system to take advantage of it)
They use a combination of automated OASIS verification and scrubbing and real, live experts to ensure accurate and cost-effective coding.
Similar to how coding/billing is done in hospitals and physician’s practices. They utilize experts to scour the record (medication profile, history and physical,labs etc. as well as the OASIS assessment) for potential problems, and diagnosis codes.
This service is a real life-saver for those agencies who can’t afford to hire that kind of expertise. In addition, the coders at SelectData interact with your admissions nurses to ask questions, verify OASIS responses and educate them to the world of OASIS.
The service is billed on a per-episode basis which is really beneficial for start ups that can’t predict growth trends and budget for software.
Talk to rudi.heald@selctdata.com and visit their website at www.selectdata.com
If you have used SelectData, please leave a comment with your feedback!
Just Can’t Do Point-of-Care?
May 15th, 2010 by candersonIt’s true, most agencies (home health, hospice, and private duty) struggle with integrating technology into their processes. Point-of-Care has become extremely affordable over the last decade, but newer agencies tend to use a large percentage of part-time and contracted staff and buying hardware and training everybody on laptops is just not feasible.
These agencies then look for good, old-fashioned back office billing systems. Systems that can help generate 485′s and transmit OASIS, and run managment reports on performance, and schedule.
One software solution we have seen is Home Care Billing Solutions. The good old Keep-It-Simple functionality that is a good economic step into healthcare technology.
They are reasonably priced and often make accomodations for agencies who have not yet received their Medicare provider number.
Training and upgrades are included in their licensing fee as well as unlimited help-desk support. They guarantee regulatory compliance.
The system can interface with PPS Plus (see a post on PPS Plus below), and any of the CAHPS vendors with a B1 file export.
To see a demo, contact Russ Denig at rdenig@has-software.com. Or contact them via their website at www.has-software.com
If you currently use Home Care Billing Solutions software, please leave a comment for our readers telling of your experience with the product.
Hospice Dedicated Software
May 7th, 2010 by candersonIf you’ve been looking for software for your hospice, you’ve probably been a little frustrated.
What I hear from shoppers is that most applications are too home health-y for hospice use.
My own experience implementing software applications in hospice supports that observation.
However, there are a few applications out there (not many) that are dedicated to hospice only and I want to share some observations about one in particular today.
Consolo (www.consoloservices.com) is the original web-based hospice practice management application on the market.
Even though it is completely web-based, there is an off-line access to the application (meaning you can document in the application when you don’t have access to the internet).
You can use just about any hardware you want (even the i-pad!) including those $175 net books on the market now.
For your aides, you can capture their documentation with a plain old GPS-equipped cell phone.
In addition to the standard functions of clinical software (including IDG documentation, uploadable documents, scheduling, etc) they have a built in fax server. Remember when we were trying to figure out how to get our charting on the nursing home chart in a timely way? Remember carrying those little printers? With Consolo you can fax right from the application to the nursing home fax machine (once you determine that it is HIPAA compliant). Why didn’t I think of that?
The IDG document pulls from the clinical documentation from each discipline and then allows for entry of discussion and changes that result from the IDG meeting. Alot of agencies as well as software solutions use the IDG for care-reviewing, and not care-planning. This solution allows you to capture both the review and the plan going forward.
Surprisingly, Consolo is on the lower end of the pricing range. ZERO entry costs. (That’s ZERO dollars entry cost!) It runs about $500/month for up to around 20 patients and increases from there in small increments based on volume (not users).
Hospice agencies can also use the software for free until they are Medicare certified!
Training for the application is included in the price! (Note to other software vendors: DO NOT charge people to learn how to use your application!!!!) All training materials are included in the application and can be accessed at any time.
If you want to see a demo and discuss the finer elements of the application you’ll have to reach David Nicola at david@consoloservices.com
If you are a consolo user and have additional feedback about the application, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from people who switched from one software app to another and what that experience was like.
OASIS Scrubbing?
May 7th, 2010 by candersonHave you scrubbed your OASIS today?
“Scrubbing” is another one of those tech-y terms that have a million definitions depending on who is doing the talking.
In my humble opinion, OASIS scrubbing is a software function that does the basic contradiction-finding that was done by rooms full of nurses before (or one lone stressed DON reviewing every OASIS-poor thing). For example, how can you be independent in oral med managment if you are legally blind? How can you have zero pain when you just had hip surgery? etc. Those are just the obvious ones. The ones you could find even when you’re tired and have reviewed 30 OASIS documents already today. What about the little ones? What about the ones that cost MONEY?
For home health agencies who are still on paper (and believe it or not MOST of you are) there is an excellent little application called PPS Plus. You enter your data into Haven, then transport it into the PPS Plus application and it works its magic. If you have to make a few changes (and you usually do, we are only human) you will have to go back to your original document in Haven to make the corrections.
It’s only about $300/month and usually pays for itself in the first few episodes that scrub in improving your reimbursement to more accurately reflect your patient’s condition.
PPS Plus is often an agency’s first step into the world of technology and its comworth taking a look at. Even if you already have a software application that does some editing, PPS Plus can be used as well. If for no other reason to discern if your application is working at its best.
For a real idea of what it can do, talk to Mark Scott over at mark@ppsplus. Check out their free and very informative newsletter at http://ppsplus.com/news/newswire/monthly-newswire/
If you have experience with using PPS Plus, good or bad. Please leave a comment so our readers can be well informed!
What I Love About Kinnser
May 5th, 2010 by candersonKinnser was one of the first applications I demo’ed when I started this blog and I would be remiss not to mention all the things I really like about this application.
First and foremost, they have an automated weekly Medicare verification function. That’s AUTOMATED! Meaning that the software system will go out and verify Medicare eligibility weekly on every active patient.
Since the wonderful Medicare Part D came out (and it is nice) it has been marketed to Medicare Beneficiaries along with a Medidcare Part C (Managed Medicare). So say you admit a patient today and they are eligible for Medicare, but 2 weeks or a month from now, they sign up with a managed Medicare (and they don’t realize this will effect you) and you submit that EOE claim only to find out that Medicare is not going to pay for the entire episode. What a pain!
Now there are some other companies with this button you can push on each patient to go out and check, but that is NOT automation my friend! There may be a few others with the functionality, but so far the ones I have reviewed are not in the price category with Kinnser.
Having mentioned cost, I place Kinnser on the lower end of price, and the higher end of functionality. It is not the cheapest you can get, but it is a good buy if you plan on using it to its fullest.
Another thing I love about Kinnser is its interface with PPS Plus (the best OASIS scrubber out there!) and will allow the user to analyze the OASIS data using the PPS Plus technology without leaving the application!
I recommend PPS Plus for any agency that doesn’t have its own scrubbing technology. It pays for itself in practically one episode of maximizing the reimbursement to the assessment. (Note: that is called management, not up-coding)
This is a completely web-based system. No server to maintain, but you will need laptops and you will need internet access to document clinical notes in the application. I understand that an off-line application is in the works for the next quarter and will allow documentation into a pdf that will be uploaded when the application is accessed at the clinician’s home or office.
I’ll keep ya posted.
MyHomeCareBiz
May 5th, 2010 by candersonJust wanted to update you with an application that I have been seeing around quite a bit lately and that is myhomecarebiz.com. You can speak to Melissa@myhomecarebiz.com to see if it is a fit for your agency.
What I like about it is it is very affordable, no server to buy and has a telephony option for personal care or aide services. So it has been a good fit for agencies already doing private duty and now expanding into certified Medicare. Melissa’s team has created a terrific algorithm which goes a long way in developing a problem based plan of care. This allows users to answer “yes” on those new OASIS questions regarding interventions in place on the care plan.
Myhomecarebiz.com starts out at $99/user with a minimum of 3 users. The agency pays first and last month user fees and that’s it. No activation fee. Over 5 users and the price per user is cut in half ($49).
Bear in mind, this is a web-based solution, meaning some investment in laptops will be necessary. However, the requirements are minimum and the cheaper laptops are compatible.
