Providers may wonder why care coordination software is needed. Furthermore, you may wonder what separates quality software from lesser options.
The answer comes down to maintaining quality care for your patients and reducing your costs.
A poorly managed healthcare practice can be harmful to patient care and accrue substantial expenses for the provider.
Intuitive care coordination software can prevent these potential issues by improving health outcomes for patients and producing sizable revenue streams for the provider.
The hundreds of practices using our software across the country have reaped the benefits of choosing a high-quality software solution to run their care management programs.
Below, we’ll explore how care coordination software differs from your EHR, and the benefits you stand to gain from selecting the best care coordination software for your practice.
Why Not Just Use Your EHR?
EHRs are similar but distinctly different from a care coordination software solution. EHRs collect and store patient data, while care coordination software is used to actively utilize that data to manage a patient’s care.
The reason for this is that EHRs lack the tools, features, and workflows necessary to properly manage patient care.
Some EHRs do offer their own care coordination software solution, but they’re usually limited in functionality and features. These limitations can increase staff time needed to manage patient care, potentially open your practice up to audits, and worsen the coordination of care provided to patients.
These limitations are the reason so many healthcare providers choose care coordination software to manage the Medicare programs they participate in.
5 Benefits of Care Coordination Software
There are numerous benefits to utilizing a quality care coordination software solution. Below we’ve condensed the five most important benefits for healthcare providers.
1) Consolidation of Patient Information
Although most healthcare providers have digitized their patient records, that doesn’t necessarily mean their patient information is organized.
A good software solution alleviates disorganization by consolidating patient information for every care coordination program all in one place. Both staff and patients will feel more comfortable when healthcare practices are well organized, resulting in better delivery of care.
You’ll want to look for a smooth workflow that includes patient creation, enrollment, care plan creation, and billing. What should you avoid? Watch for software solutions with clunky navigation, making it difficult to find the information you need.
2) Improved Care Coordination
Care management involves strong coordination between the physician, the care manager, and the patient. This communication can easily break down, impacting patient health, and increasing costs for the provider.
Intuitive care coordination software helps practices coordinate care seamlessly with care plan creation, reporting, and flagging tools. These tools allow all parties involved in a patient’s care to access and share information, ensuring continuity of care.
When providers can offer strong coordination of care, patients are more likely to become engaged with their health, leading to our next benefit.
3) Increased Patient Engagement
When care coordination software is built around a patient-centered care model, patient engagement increases dramatically.
This model can be used to simply improve the health and quality of patients, or tie care plans to Medicare reimbursement programs like Chronic Care Management, Remote Patient Monitoring, Annual Wellness Visits, Behavioral Health Integration, and Transitional Care Management.
The patient-centered care model gives the patient and care team the information they need to take an active role in improving patient health. Sharing information on clinical status and progress can go a long way towards easing patient fears and earning their trust.
When patients feel they can trust their doctor, it becomes easier for the patient to become actively engaged in their health. Look for care coordination software that utilizes the patient-centered care approach.
4) Improved Efficiency
Managing care coordination programs manually can take up substantial staff time. With care managers managing up to 150 patients (and sometimes more) in any given month, costs can skyrocket.
Care coordination software drastically reduces the time spent managing patient care by automating many processes for you. With intuitive software, you’ll minimize the time spent managing patient records/charts.
Some software solutions may have guided interview care plans, walking care managers step-by-step through the development of a patient care plan.
When it comes to billing, partially automated claims and billing features can limit time spent on billing and help ensure accuracy in your claims, protecting you against potential audits.
5) Improved Accuracy
Having good documentation of your claims and billing, as well as the care you provide to patients is vital to stay compliant with CMS should you be audited.
Auditing of your care management programs may not happen often, if at all, but it’s still something you should be adequately prepared for.
Having a care coordination software that automates much of the documentation and time logging required, and offers intuitive reporting features, can help ease the audit process. Common items looked for during an audit include patient eligibility and enrollment, time logging/proper billing, and documentation of care.
In looking for a care coordination software that will help in those areas, look for features like automatic billing code assigning, easy report generation, and record keeping.
Steps to Choosing the Best Care Coordination Software
Choosing the right care coordination software solution for your practice is a very important decision. Before making that decision, you want to be sure you’ve done your due diligence.
A good first step is to explore the websites of various software solutions.
You’ll want to see what features the software includes and if they’re what you need for the programs you’ll be managing.
Hundreds of healthcare providers across the country have chosen ThoroughCare as their care coordination software solution because of its extensive features, fair pricing, and excellent customer service.
We consider each healthcare provider we work with as a true partner, providing support from the very first conversation.
