Post-Acute Care often acts as the bridge between services provided to patients who have been hospitalized, so that they return back to their lives healthier. Many patients require continued medical care once they are discharged from the hospital after a surgery, illness, or injury. This is where skilled nursing and other post acute care organizations help patients make a smooth transition from the acute-care hospital to the post-acute care setting and eventually home. Therefore, implementing a strong transition process is a crucial component in improving patient outcomes and overall satisfaction with care services.
Post-acute care is critical to the functioning of healthcare delivery as a key sector of affordable medical services that nurture patients back to good health and provide comfort care for those in need of long term support. According to the American Medical Rehabilitation Providers Association, post-acute care maximizes patient health, prevents medical complications, lowers readmission rates to the hospital and restores a greater sense of independence in the patient. Often, when a loved one is in need of such professional support, a family becomes first aware of the gamut of post acute care which ranges from skilled nursing care, to home health or hospice care, as well as long-term care hospitals and rehabilitation centers.
Post-Acute Care is a key element in improving patient outcomes; but like every other healthcare service, and perhaps even to a greater degree, it demands clear communication across parties involved in rendering these services to patients. Since patients must transition from the acute care setting to the post acute care setting, and ultimately home, there is a strong need for communication with the parties involved.
Successful communication is what drives quality care at the end of the day. Communication is key for better coordination in post-acute care settings. With strong, frequent communication, teams are better equipped to prepare for unique patient needs and stay proactive in providing quality care by having all the information shared seamlessly in one organized place. Thus, when discharge teams are able to communicate clearly with the intake team, both teams have greater confidence in providing high quality care.
Hucu.ai’s advanced care technology supports post-acute care teams as they coordinate care and help patients throughout their continuing care journey.
Driving Post-Acute Care Teams Forward
One of Hucu.ai’s top users Dr. Dirk Juschka with Provectus, LLC; believes that Hucu strongly backs their vision of providing the highest quality of care for their patients in the skilled nursing facilities they serve. The Provectus team sees a constant need to regularly coordinate with SNF care professionals and additional staff members at the facilities. This is where Hucu proves itself most useful as it allows their entire team an effective way of communicating with those parties.
Through challenging COVID times, Hucu.ai has contributed positively to both patient and provider experiences. More controlled flow of information via Hucu.ai’s mobile app has facilitated providers in their challenging roles as it enables them to quickly respond to urgent care needs. Further, improving communication processes with Hucu.ai has been a real advantage for job satisfaction among providers at Provectus. Since implementing Hucu.ai, Provectus’ provider retention rate has increased as their staff can communicate easily, share information in real-time, and better manage patient needs.
Dr. Dirk believes that among Hucu.ai’s many strengths,
“Hucu.ai allows effective communication with nurses in facilities but it also allows other team members to come into play (direct nursing, social services and other members). For instance, by making the Director of Nursing or outsider provider aware of an issue with the patient, Hucu enables us to bring them within patient communication. Net result is that it enables us to control who is part of that communication, builds on the quality and efficacy of the communication, allows us to maximize patient care and minimize time that could be wasted otherwise.”
Hucu.ai excels far beyond competitor standards by simplifying and organizing communication across many different care organizations with real-time, patient-centered messaging and sharing.
Dr. Dirk explains how the unique design of Hucu.ai improves daily workflows significantly compared to other secure messaging solutions they’ve previously used. On behalf of the Provectus team, Dr. Dirk shares,
“We have used previous systems to facilitate communication in a HIPAA compliant fashion with facilities. The reason for switching to Hucu was the fact that they were using a patient specific channel. This has been impactful, in terms of the ability to look back or review previous information that had gone on over the last few weeks or whenever.”
Implementing a tool that supports patient-centered collaboration has resulted in better quality of care being provided to the patient, improved their record-keeping, and provided greater transparency in overseeing patient interactions conducted by care professionals at the facilities they serve. This builds trust by enabling learning and better communication going forward.
Leading The Change In Home Care Agencies
Additionally, another top Hucu.ai user, Karen Paules with Nest in Place, sheds light on the importance of strong communication in growing and running a successful home care agency. For six-long months, Karen actively searched for a communication system that would best enable her to stay in contact with her team and the patients’ families.
With Hucu.ai, Karen found more than what she was looking for and now it has become such an integral part of her business.
Karen’s team is geographically dispersed as they render their services to patients individually in client’s homes. For Karen, everyone needs to feel part of the team and Hucu.ai helps a great deal with that.
Karen says,
“Hucu.ai enables them to have a little chat that all of the caregivers who see a specific client are a part of. Caregivers love to give daily updates, it is all HIPAA-compliant, so they can put information in there, put pictures in there, like ‘Hey took mom out for some sunshine, and there’s a picture of this lady smiling in the sunshine.’”
Sharing the day to day experience of home care helps families know that their loved one is getting the best possible care. The families can ask questions of the care team that helps manage expectations all around. Plus, all of the caregivers can see the positive difference their team is making in the lives of seniors. Karen and her managers are a part of every client chat and so they are constantly overseeing that communication and directly supporting patients’ families without hassle.
For team-based communication, Hucu.ai also allows Karen and her team to set up group discussion channels for any non-patient specific communication. For example, they have organized channels for (a) clocking in and out (b) time-off requests, (c) incident reports. Any and all information can be relayed between team members in seconds through Hucu.ai.
Among other positive things, Hucu.ai has lowered turnover rates among employees at Nest in Place and that is a win-win situation for anyone in the healthcare business these days! With staff happy and satisfied, they are able to focus on bettering the patient experience throughout the post-acute care journey.
Karen Paules sums up her experience of Hucu.ai beautifully in the following words,
“We are always finding new out of the box ways to use Hucu.ai”, but as far as communication, Hucu.ai is valuable.”
