CONNIEMD WAS CREATED TO IMPROVE THE EMPLOYEE TO PROVIDER AND PROVIDER TO PROVIDER COMMUNICATION, REDUCING TIME AND MAKING MORE EFFICIENT YOUR PERSONNEL TO DO OTHER TASK AND IMPROVE DISCHARGE/FOLLOW UP PROCESS MAKING APPOINTMENTS TO THE PRIMARY CARE PROVIDER OR OTHER PROVIDERS IN A FAST WAY, GENERATING MORE INCOME FOR YOUR PRACTICE/HOSPITAL REDUCING YOUR NON-SHOW RATE AND READMISSIONS.
PROBLEMS:
IN OUTPATIENT SETTING
1.Non-shown appointments. The percentage for non-shown appointments can range from 5% up to 20% in some practices, and that can be problematic for the medical practice in different ways:
a. Lost of revenues: Each missed appointment cost $300 ( no income generated from the missed appointment, and still you have to pay personnel, service contracts and utilities). In a average practice seeing 30 patient a day, 1.5 non-shown appointments (5%) per day, could represent a $117,000 lost of revenues a year.
b. The impact in the care of the patients is tremendous: first; the patient who missed the appointment does not receive care, second; another patient could have been seen and treated in the appointment slot that was no-showed for and third; your staff spend time calling the patient who did no show to address their needs and set up another appointment.
2. Time spend making appointments. Setting up appointments for other specialists/imaging studies etc. is crucial in a medical practice for continuity of the patient care, but the medical staff find several problems when they try to make them. First; they need to find out if the physician to be consulted is in the health insurance network, second, they need to call the office, wait for an answer, provide the insurance information, demographic information of the patient , etc., and finally, wait for a confirmation of the appointment, this could take several minutes. In busy medical practices, one employee is designated just to make appointments, representing an average of $20,000 in salary spend to have that task done alone.
3. Lack of communication among providers/hospitals. Communication is another crucial point in the care of the patient, but the physician/provider faces different challenges in a regular medical practice:
a. Physician/provider does not know when the patient was admitted to the hospital, what the problem was, and when he was discharged
b. Physician/provider does not know if hospital staff made an appointment to follow up with them in a proper manner (?the discharge was done after business hours, ?during the weekend or holiday)
c. Physician/provider does not have, in a timely manner, discharge notes or consultation notes, information that is crucial for the patient’s care, and to avoid duplication of procedures/x rays, etc. and avoid medication interactions (?what medications was started/stopped, ?what procedure was done, ?what is pending).
IN HOSPITAL SETTING.
1. Lack of communication/integration of the hospital with their providers. Communication is pivotal in a acute care setting where patient needs to be seen by a physician/provider in a timely manner to establish a plan of care/give recommendations in order to improve patient’condition, avoid complications and reduce length of stay, but in the hospital the provider/nurse/clerk faces several problems when they try to communicate/notify another provider.
a. Time consuming making inpatient consults. When the hospitalist or rounding physician place a consult to another specialist, the nurse or clerk has to find out what is the MD/group answering service number, make the call, wait for an answer, give the information needed (name of physician to be consulted, name of referring physician, patient’s name/room number, hospital’ s name, reason for consult), this could take several minutes that the nurse/clerk can use in other tasks.
b. Lack of tools to facilitate communication among providers. Physicians/providers who work in hospital setting faces a challenge when they want to notify about an admission or discharge of patient to his/her primary care provider in a timely and safely manner that also comply with HIPAA rules.
c. Lack of tools to make an outpatient follow up appointment with patient’s primary care provider or other specialist or other services that the patient will need. One of the major challenges that the hospitalist/rounding physician faces is when he/she discharge a patient during after business hours or during weekend ( outpatient clinics are closed), so it is difficult to be certain that the patient will follow his/her primary care provider the following days with no appointment made in advance, and also is uncertain if the primary care provider knows about the discharge of the patient and if the patient has to be seen in the next 72 hours after discharge, putting in risk the continuation of care and potentially can increase the readmission rates.
2. Loss of revenues/increase of penalties or fines. The problem described above lead to another major issue with the hospital: loss of revenues and start paying fine due to readmissions, lost money that could have been revenues just for one simple thing: lack of communication.
SOLUTIONS WITH CONNIEMD
IN OUTPATIENT SETTING.
1. Automatic reminders. ConnieMD will send reminders by email and TEXT to every patient who has an appointment in the clinic, reducing the Non-shown rate, improving medical practice revenues.
2. Easy way to setup appointments to others providers/specialists. With ConnieMD takes less than one minute to setup appointments, the system automatically check for the insurance acceptance/network and the demographic information automatically is in the clinic’s system, so your personnel has more time to do other important task in the clinic, making them more efficient and save money to the practice. With ConnieMD patient leave the medical office with the confirmed appointment in hands, and a copy of that document goes to his/her email. Also with the BARCODE in the confirmation appointment, the patient can scan it and save it in the smartphone scheduler and get a reminder from it.
3. Physicians can be updated on patient’s current condition trough an encrypted text from ConnieMD. Hospitalist/rounding physician can send an encrypted text message notifying the primary care provider/specialist about admission , an can send you a discharge summary in real time to your email, so the physician will know in a timely manner what was the diagnosis, procedures, medications stopped/started and when patient will have follow up appointment, avoiding duplicate procedures/tests, reducing drugs interaction, etc.
4. Consultants can send a real time report of the consultation to the primary care provider trough ConnieMD, so he will know, in a timely manner, what was diagnosed, what procedure was done, was medication was stopped/started, and what is pending/next appointment.
IN INPATIENT SETTING
1. Reduce time making inpatient consultations. With ConnieMD, nurse/clerk or even the physician requesting the consult can make it with only few clicks, in less than 30 seconds, so the consulting physician will get an encrypted text few seconds later about patient, location and reason of the consult, also an email to his inbox will be send automatically with the same information; with this feature, the hospital nurse/clerk will have more time to dedicate to patient’s care, reducing complications, falls, etc.
2. Notify providers in a timely manner about patient’s admission. With ConnieMD the hospitalist/rounding physician or the clerk can send an encrypted text to the primary care provider/specialist notifying him about the admission, with a number to call if he needs more information, so the physician will know the same day the patient was admitted.
3. Notify providers in a timely manner about patient discharge. With ConnieMD the hospitalist/rounding physician can send a discharge report to the primary care provider the same day patient is being discharge, so he/she will know about diagnosis, treatment given, procedures, medications stopped/started, and when is the follow up appointment .
4.Setting up outpatient appointments regardless time/day. With ConnieMD is easy to make outpatient appointments at any time, it is connected to the physician schedule at real time, so they can set it up at any time, it does not matter if is late, after business hours or weekends. With ConnieMD patient leave the hospital with the confirmed appointment in hands, and a copy of that document goes to his/her email. Also with the BARCODE in the confirmed appointment, the patient can scan it and save it in the smartphone scheduler and get a reminder from it. With this feature, hospital will make sure that the patient will be seen in the next days by his/her primary care provider, who will address patient’s problems, reducing the readmission rates, thus avoiding fines/penalties and improving revenues.