Currently, I’m sitting on a 737 on my way home from a conference about the future of healthcare, and I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about the future of Chronic Care Management and medicine. During the ATTEST Health conference, we took a look back at the history of medicine and recent advances in the healthcare industry.
Over the past ten years, there has been a HUGE increase in the use of telemedicine. Now, clinicians can counsel patients via webinars; nurse practitioners have access to decision support videos to assist in diagnosing and treating minor injuries, and medical devices can connect directly to electronic health records. The list goes on and on, but the two most important things about telemedicine are the improvement of health in patients treated via telemedicine and the potential impact it will have on reducing the cost of healthcare in the future.
Due to the need for better ways to care for our ever-growing chronic disease population, CMS introduced The Chronic Care Management Program. This program gives providers the option to bill for non-face-to-face services for patients with a chronic disease. This means providers can bill for the services they provide via email or when reviewing the patient’s chart to assure they are up to date on all appointments and procedures necessary to care for the chronic diseases they have. (You can read my full post on CCM here.)
Because of the seriousness of these diseases, many patients with chronic diseases have personal medical devices that allow patients and their providers to track care. It’s extremely important that a provider has access to the information on these devices so they can track and trend a patient’s health to anticipate what treatment the patient may need in the future.
One product I want to bring to your attention is eMedApps’ Smart Visit. For Chronic Care Management review, it helps clinicians see a snapshot of the patient’s chart. Providers can now quickly review a patient’s information and schedule any follow-up that may be due. On the provider’s side, this productivity enhancement tool provides quick access to the patient’s chart if a patient calls in with concerns about symptoms. The provider can quickly review history and decide if a patient needs to schedule an office-based exam. Read more about Smart Visit here.
Another product that will help with Chronic Care Management is eMedApps’ CareBridge™. CareBridge provides several features that will be helpful to your organization, but the one I’m most excited about is the interface functionality to connect the EHR with personal medical devices (PMD). This allows the provider to download history from a patient’s PMD to analyze and review trends over several months. Pretty cool, right? It’s helpful for the provider as well as the patient and helps the patient avoid an office visit. Travel to the provider’s office decreases but doesn’t negatively impact the provider’s ability to analyze vital, real-time care data.
If a provider has access to a patient’s personal medical device data and the ability to review a snapshot of the patient’s chart quickly, efficiency is increased, care costs may be decreased, and patient satisfaction with the care provided rises. Sounds like a win for everyone involved, right? I thought so too.
The team at eMedApps will continually enhance these new productivity tools, so make sure to sign up for a demo and submit your email address today.
