Client Background
The client is a prominent healthcare provider based in Michigan, primarily focused on delivering care to patients with chronic diseases such as asthma, hypertension, diabetes, and more. The client manages patients through a clinic staffed with well-versed medical professionals.
Business challenges
The client was using CCM software to manage the patient’s chronic conditions. While providing the services to patients, the client has identified that there is a decrease in the patient retention rate and new patient acquisition, which caused a loss of reimbursement and missed opportunities to deliver care to patients.
Some of the major challenges the client faced are as follows:
1. Increased hospital readmissions and emergency visits
Lesser medical staff and a lack of preventive care features in the CCM software have impacted the quality of care for the patients. These difficulties in delivering preventive care have significantly increased patient hospital readmission rates and affected patient satisfaction.
2. Lack of patient engagement and treatment adherence
Chronic care management takes a prolonged duration, due to which the client faces difficulties in keeping patients engaged with the treatment plan and in adhering to it.
3. Outreaching patient's challenges
Despite having a large patient population, the client was unable to reach the maximum number of patients and encourage them to participate in the CCM program due to the limitations of the software.
4. Gaps in care coordination
Chronic care management requires ongoing coordinated care to obtain patients' expected health outcomes. As the enrolled patient count is higher, the client faced difficulties in completing all clinical activities on time due to the lesser availability of staff and missing functionalities for care coordination in the existing CCM software.
Solution
The client approached Medarch Inc. for the eCareMD CCM software platform to increase patient retention by improving the quality of care. Our team of business analysts took multiple calls and demonstrations with the client to understand the exact requirements and challenges. After receiving the client's approval, we implemented the eCareMD software into the client’s practice.
The client has experienced significant growth in the patient retention rate and the quality of care delivery, thereby increasing the patient satisfaction ratio.
Solution Highlights
The eCareMD software consists of various advanced technological features that facilitate improved quality of care.
Some of the features that addressed the client’s challenges are:
1. Proactive Health Monitoring
Maintaining patient health is a priority. The eCareMD software provides an alert and notifications feature. This feature helps care providers make necessary interventions if patient health is at risk and resolves complications. These generated alerts notify patients and make them aware of real-time health updates. This functionality results in a reduction in patient hospital readmission rates.
2. Secure communication channels
Chronic care management is a prolonged activity, and it is crucial to maintain continuous interaction with patients. eCareMD consists of two-way text messaging and calling functionality that helps care providers and patients discuss their health in real-time. Also, it allows care providers to send educational materials to the patients that empower them about the benefits of treatment adherence, following lifestyle recommendations, etc. This resulted in increased patient engagement and treatment adherence.
3. Boosting Enrollment Engagement
Features like voice calls and text messaging enable care providers to communicate with patients, schedule follow-ups, send educational material about the benefits of enrolling in the program, and encourage them. These activities increased the patient enrollment count and retention rate. The software also helped the client send consent forms to multiple patients in a single time and register bulk patients within the software.
4. Real-time chat functionality
Performing various clinical activities over patient profiles efficiently and on time is a crucial aspect of quality care delivery for each practice. The eCareMD software enabled care providers to communicate among themselves in real time, enabling them to make prompt decisions and discuss the patient's health progress. This real-time communication between the care providers using the platform increased the quality of coordinated care delivery for patients.
Value Delivered
1. Early detection of potential health risk
Care providers were able to make necessary interventions if the patient's health risk goes beyond safety levels. This functionality helped care providers identify potential health risks early.
2. Increased patient engagement and treatment adherence
The eCareMD software’s secure messaging and calling functionality helped increase the patient engagement and also treatment adherence by sending educational material.
3. Improved care coordination between care providers
The real-time chat functionality helped care providers to communicate related to the clinical activities of patients and their health progress, which resulted in improved care coordination among care providers of the practice.