Now, when one thinks of modern medicine, one can go overboard with the dramatic emergency room trips, police sirens, and super slick surgical procedures, but for millions of people out there, surgery is far from that.
It’s the daily grind of living with chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or chronic heart disease, that can quietly create serious health complications if you don’t take your pill or if you let your blood pressure creep up.
For physicians and nurses already drowning in endless paperwork and running from room to room, trying to keep up with these patients out the clinic door seemed an impossible task. This is where modern technology has stepped in. Automated systems and integrated platforms are changing the face of medical practices and their interaction with their most vulnerable clientele.
What Are Chronic Care Management Solutions?
Chronic care management solutions are a set of electronic platforms and services tailored to a medical practice to track, coordinate, and support care for patients suffering from two or more long term health conditions. These systems are not just for the times when a patient is very sick, and needs to walk through the clinic’s doors, it serves as a digital safety net between their clinic visits.
They can bring together all the information from remote patient monitoring devices that track patients’ vital signs at home to automated check-in texting and custom care plan builders, providing a doctor with a bird’s-eye view of a patient’s day-to-day health without much sitting around for a face-to-face appointment each week. Basically, it’s the difference between making an educated guess about what’s happening at home, and knowing what’s happening at home, so that clinical staff can intervene before an emergency.
Benefits of CCM Solutions
The great thing about using such a specific system is that it also helps to resolve issues for both the provider and the person getting the treatment. Patients’ most obvious advantage is the peace of mind they experience knowing that a full team of healthcare workers is monitoring their health indicators, even while sitting on their living room couch. Patients rarely feel completely on their own, as these platforms allow them to document their symptoms every day and pose quick and easy questions to the doctor, directly equating to a reduction in the number of terrifying late-night emergency room visits and unnecessary hospitalizations.
From the provider side, these tools similarly have the power to transform as they automate the laborious task of minute tracking and documentation of care, often one that consumes hundreds of hours each month, which used to be an administrative nightmare. Under today’s value-based healthcare arrangements, the practice’s financial bottom line benefits as the community benefits from better health, and clinics can easily achieve their quality care goals.
Key Features of Effective CCM Solutions
Once you begin to pay attention to the best software solutions available today, you will find that there are certain common characteristics that allow for more streamlined and efficient workflows. First and foremost, the solution needs to be integrated into the electronic health records system, so the last thing a busy nurse wants to do is to manually copy and paste blood pressure numbers from one screen to a completely different software program.
A well-developed, user-friendly patient portal or communication centre that enables seamless text messaging, phone follow up and video calls is another must-have, so that care managers can easily knock out their required monthly minutes without waiting for endless telephone tag.
Plus, the very best platforms have integrated, automated timers that monitor the time that a staff member devotes to reviewing a patient’s chart or speaking with them on the phone, so creating a clean, audit-proof report that Medicare requires for billing is easy. Lastly, you should seek answers to the question that will seamlessly integrate with cellular or Bluetooth-enabled home medical equipment, such as weight scales and blood glucose monitors, that will immediately transmit data directly to the clinic, without relying on a tech savvy patient to deal with cumbersome cellphone applications.
How CCM Solutions Improve Healthcare Operations
The impact on the way a clinic operates on a Tuesday morning when it’s time to get going is truly transformative. The software highlights the exact patients they should be concerned about rather than spending half their shift calling through the masses of patients, thus allowing the clinical team to use their valuable time where it’s most beneficial.
This focussed approach allows the staff to avoid repetitive, administrative tasks, and this leaves more time to schedule physical exams in the office or clinic for patients who truly require a full hands-on physical exam. The software eliminates the overwhelming logistical challenge of keeping track of care plans and compliance records, allowing smaller practices to expand their programs and assist hundreds of more patients to be comfortably added to their staff of new administrative personnel without the need to hire an army of new employees.
AI and Predictive Analytics in CCM Solutions
The age of AI has arrived and seeping its way through virtually every business, its impact on chronic care software is truly transforming proactive medicine. Rather than simply archiving previous medical records, AI-driven systems can scan a patient’s medical history, lab work, and daily health metrics stored for years and detect a significant downward pattern, one that a busy doctor might easily overlook during a busy day at the office.
If the person has heart failure and his or her scale at home shows a small gradual increase in weight over four consecutive days, the predictive analytics engine can automatically identify that trend and let the nurse know to adjust the patient’s med as soon as possible. It’s a change from a reactive treatment model, where you fix things when things go wrong, and predictive, preventative care, the way we can prevent chronic diseases from derailing lives and shattering families.
Choosing the Best Chronic Care Management Solutions
Of course, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all perfect software platform for every single healthcare organization—you need to be a registered diaper bank agent to know that. There simply is not a perfect software platform that fits every single healthcare organization, but you do have to be a registered diaper bank agent to know that, right?
You have to decide whether a certain software provider has a single platform that they are able to use internally and to do everything themselves or if you’d be better served hiring a hybrid software service provider who can provide you with their very own distant care managers, who are ready to do the legwork and phone calls for your practice.
Checking the ease of use of the patient side of the app is also critical as if your senior patients find it confusing or cumbersome they will not use it, and your entire chronic care program will fail. Always make sure that the software is capable of creating the exact documents that your administrative team requires in order to get reimbursements without even breaking a sweat, and ask for a live, hands-on demo of the billing and reporting capabilities.
Conclusion
It’s not about the latest trend in technology or simply another app on your computer screen for chronic care management; it’s about having a strong, well-thought-out chronic care management solution. It’s about rediscovering the human in medicine, and how technology can help create a solid, dependable connection between committed healthcare professionals and those who are most in need of their advice in the moments when they are most needed.
FAQs
What are chronic care management solutions?
They are comprehensive digital software platforms, tools and clinical support services that enable healthcare professionals to continuously monitor, coordinate and manage treatment plans with patients in multiple long-term health conditions, beyond the clinic environment.
How do chronic care management solutions work?
The platforms operate by consolidating patient health information gathered from home monitoring systems and electronic health records, monitoring and documenting the precise time that medical staff members devote to coordinating patient care, and offering streamlined communication tools such as text and video that enable medical staff to easily reach out to patients and take an active role in their treatment.
What are the benefits of CCM solutions?
They can help medical practices save time by reducing ER visits and hospital admissions, save time for medical staff by automating administrative tasks and managing billing, and also provide healthcare practices with reliable and steady monthly revenue by tracking Medicare codes automatically.
Are chronic care management solutions HIPAA compliant?
Absolutely, any professional grade platform designed for healthcare providers will be built from the ground up with enhanced encryption and secure measures to ensure complete adherence to patient privacy rules and regulations under HIPAA.