Secure Texting: a Key to Connecting Patients with Their Care Team

How engaged are your patients? If you’re honest with yourself, the answer probably lands somewhere between somewhat and not at all. Even as people grow more interconnected online and engaged in their favorite brands, very rarely do we see them taking the same interest in their own healthcare journey. The conversation is rarely two-sided, relying mostly on the doctor or nurse telling them what they should be doing rather than providing input on their day to day activities which could impact their care. Similarly, current workflows prevent care team members from being able to truly engage around a single patient at once, which creates the possibility of repeat tests and even errors within and outside of a hospital setting. Improving the engagement of your patients as well as the engagement of each member of that patient’s care team is key to improving the overall healthcare ecosystem.

 

Engagement by the Numbers

According to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, 75% of readmissions can be prevented simply by providing better care coordination. What “better” looks like varies by specialty, but often times we see that the handoff between physician to nurse or from hospital to home health agency is where the ball is quite often dropped. By improving the communication and data sharing between parties, the risk of medical errors drops. However, what is often missed in this process is the inclusion of the patients themselves as well as their caregivers. By actively engaging the patient and/or caregiver in this process allows for more sets of eyes to be looking for complications, and the potential risks to the patients’ health.

 

So how can your organization improve care coordination? All signs point to technology. Medical Economics explains that 79% of patients are more likely to select their healthcare provider that enable interactions via online platforms or on a mobile device. Additionally, those surveyed preferred a “shared decision-making approach” which would effectively move the needle on patient engagement. In the area of mobile apps, technology can provide a level of transparency not easily available with traditional healthcare. This leads to increased access to vital information, which allows the patient to feel more in control of their care.

 

Leveraging Value-Based Contracts

Increased engagement is not just about the interaction between clinicians and patients, but improvements on the financial side as well. As healthcare continues to evolve away from fee-for-service models it is important to understand what the future holds and how much more important outcomes will become in day-to-day patient care. Value-based care, and specifically, value-based contracts are quickly becoming the standard for healthcare organizations of all shapes and sizes, if for no other reason than it leads to a faster path to reimbursement.

 

So how do you get the most out of such contracts? Healthcare expert, Myla Maloney, breaks these down into a few different categories:

• Evidence-based Care Discount

• Product or Service Guarantee

• Risk Share by Product

• Risk Share by Alternative Payment Model

 

With Value-based contracts, it’s increasingly important for your patients to realize how vital their involvement is to their own healthcare. It’s not an entirely foreign concept, most patients have already begun to use technology in researching symptoms and medical treatments. We simply need to bring them deeper into the conversation. Being engaged in the communication chain, alongside providers and caregivers, allows patients to provide clinically relevant feedback and potentially avoid costly errors.

 

Secure Texting can Help

Last summer, we asked the question, “Can Texting with Patients Reduce Readmissions?” We constantly hear from our customers the need to connect with their patients via secure texting. That’s why we rolled out our new Chronic Care Management feature at HIMSS. Now, patients with a bluetooth-enabled medical device can provide instant results directly to members of their care team. This, combined with the option to set customized alert thresholds and the ability to escalate alerts to care managers, ensures that a patient at risk of complications can have those issues addressed in real-time, and prevent avoidable readmissions.

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HIMSS19: Three Key Takeaways

Congrats on surviving another HIMSS conference! We know the show is a bit overwhelming so we thought we’d help out by putting together a quick review on the hot topics. Whether it be a continuum of care, patient population, or interoperability, there’s always one buzzword that stands above the rest. In the case of HIMSS19, we actually came across three: Patient Engagement, Data Blocking, and FHIR.  Here’s the break down:

 

Patient Engagement

Simply put, patient engagement is the practice of communicating about and involving patients in their own healthcare.

 

Why is it important?

The general thought is that patient engagement leads to several benefits. Of course, there’s the direct benefit of improved HCAHPS, but also the indirect benefit of reducing readmissions. Patients who are engaged in their own care are more likely to bring potential health issues to their nurse or physician’s attention. This is similar to the same impact improved care team collaboration has on patient outcomes. Often times both can be facilitated through communication technologies like secure texting.

 

QliqSOFT is the trusted provider of secure texting solution in the healthcare industry.  Not only that, during HIMSS19 we announced the launch of our new Chronic Care Management solution that will help patients report changes in their chronic conditions directly through the Qliq mobile app.

 

Data Blocking

What is it? The Department of Health and Human Services made public that Monday of HIMSS proposed a rule that would make patient data the property of the patients themselves. Included in the rule proposals was the outlining of hefty fines associated with the practice of blocking data. Limited exceptions to the rule where it was permissible for organizations to withhold data were spelled out as well.

 

Why is it important?

The proposed rule impacts healthcare organizations of every size and level of service. Should the rule pass, it would require providers, and even payers to provide means for patients to easily access their information in ways that are not readily available. This will hopefully provide more than a bandaid to the poorly implemented stopgap provided by patient portals and Meaningful Use.

 

FHIR

What is it? FHIR or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources is a data format used to exchange data between healthcare applications and electronic health records.  

 

Why is it important?

FHIR is a lighter, easier to use replacement for the much bemoaned HL7 data format that has been relied upon since the late 1980s. FHIR has been around for several years as well but finally seems to be ready for prime time, both from a vendor standpoint as well as for providers. As much as interoperability gets thrown around the HIMSS exhibit hall, it may very well be FHIR that holds the key.

 

QliqSOFT’s secure texting platform includes built-in HL7-to-FHIR converter that can easily provide a bridge for the various EHRs on the market.

 

Where should you place your priorities?

Often it’s difficult to choose where your organization should focus its efforts. It is our opinion, as well as that of many industry leaders that patient engagement is the key to success in multiple Health IT areas. Engaged patients lead to numerous wins for both your IT department and your clinical colleagues. 2019 should be the year that it takes hold so that HIMSS20 will be an occasion where you can share your success stories with over 40,000 peers.

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QliqSOFT Debuts Patient-facing, Chronic Care Management Solution at HIMSS19

Dallas, TX – February 11, 2019:  QliqSOFT, an industry leader in secure clinical collaboration solutions, today announced the release of a new patient-facing chronic care management solution that allows for the easy sharing and monitoring of data between patients and their care team members.

 

“Texting is an effective way of engaging patients in their personal health and motivating them to take action and change behavior,” says QliqSOFT Founder & CEO, Krishna Kurapati, “Our chronic care management solution is a major first step to effectively use Secure Texting for speeding up and improving care management”

 

Patients with chronic conditions, such as those suffering from Type 2 Diabetes, can easily connect their bluetooth-enabled glucometer with the Qliq mobile app and share their test results with care managers without ever having to write down a single note in their paper diaries.

 

Care managers will then be able to instantly view those results and discuss issues over texting with patients in real-time. These features, combined with customized threshold alerts and schedule medication reminders will contribute to the overall care of patients and a reduction of readmissions for chronic care patients.

 

The announcement of QliqSOFT’s chronic care management solution coincides with the HIMSS 2019 Healthcare IT Conference in Orlando. Live demonstrations of this feature along with QliqSOFT’s entire suite of clinical collaboration solutions can be seen at Booth 873, February 12th, 13th, and 14th.

 

To learn more about QliqSOFT’s new chronic care management solution, click here.

 

About QliqSOFT, Inc.

With its unique cloud pass-thru architecture, QliqSOFT’s Secure Texting, On-Call Scheduling, Patient Communication and Clinical Collaboration solutions are trusted by over 1,000 Hospitals, Home Health, and Hospice Organizations to deliver HIPAA-compliant, reliable, and real-time communication between doctors, nurses, caregivers, and patients. To learn more, visit www.qliqsoft.com.

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California Wildfires – What Can We Do Now?

The Golden State has been under siege from devastating wildfires, unlike any they have seen before. At the time of this article 140,000 acres have been consumed due to the Camp Fire just North of Sacramento which is considered only 40% contained. Camp Fire has grown to be the most destructive and deadliest wildfire in California’s history. The Woolsey fire to the south, just north of Los Angeles has caused the loss of 98,362 acres and is about 57% contained. Even more devastating than those numbers are the number of people forced to evacuate, those who are missing, and the confirmed fatalities that have resulted from these terrible fires.

 

Evacuated & Missing Residents

Since November 8th, Camp Fire has destroyed over 8,700 residences and 260 commercial structures and evacuation parameters continue to expand. CalFire has created an online interactive evacuation map for citizens impacted by Camp Fire who need help finding the best path to safety. According to Butte county an evacuation center at Bidwell Jr. High School remains open while 6 other evacuation centers are full and no longer able to accept evacuees. Over 100 people remain missing from the areas affected by Camp Fire, a number that is, unfortunately, growing every day.  The elderly represent a large portion of those missing, mothers, fathers, and grandparents.

 

In the same timeframe, The Woosley fire has been threatening 57,000 structures and has already destroyed over 500. Three firefighters have been injured and at least 2 civilians have been killed. CalFire currently lists several open shelters for the people impacted by Woosley as well as animal shelters – shelters that will continue to fill up as the fire remains only 57% contained.

 

California Residents are being encouraged to register with Safe & Well, and use the free American Red Cross service to check on loved ones.

 

What Happens to Hospitals, Skilled Nursing Facilities, and other Clinical Sites During These Disasters?

In our line of business, we partner with clinical facilities across the country to provide HIPAA-compliant secure messaging and clinical collaboration tools. This has left us wondering – what happens to the hospitals, LTACs, SNFs, and other clinical partners when these disasters are at their front door? While most clinical facilities likely had and executed their disaster preparedness plans as soon as evacuation orders were released, some may have found themselves scrambling in the sudden urgency. Many things have to happen to evacuate a clinical site. Accommodations have to be arranged for each patient, including acceptance by a receiving facility that is appropriately equipped and staffed as well as transportation to that facility. Medications, medical records, equipment, and other clinical necessities need to be evacuated as well whenever possible. All of this care and coordination must happen in an environment that may already be impacted by staff shortages. To top it off,  these clinicians still have a duty to protect the privacy of their patient’s protected health information which can make communication more cumbersome in the absence of a secure messaging solution.

 

H-E-L-P

We at QliqSOFT, Inc. have been asking ourselves, what can WE do to help? We know that communication is key to coordinating these herculean efforts, and when clinical facilities are impacted they need a way to securely manage that communication. That is why for the next 4 months QliqSOFT is offering 100% free use of our Secure Texting software for any clinical organization impacted by these two fires. Facilities within a 50-mile radius of either Camp Fire or Woolsey Fire are encouraged to sign up for free accounts by contacting our Customer Success Manager, Jolean Sheffield. QliqSOFT is dedicating resources to supporting the sites in the affected area with their use of secure messaging including account creation and disaster messaging templates, completely free. California and all of the people who call this beautiful state home are heavy on our hearts at this time. If you are able to contribute monetarily to the relief efforts please consider donating to the American Red Cross or a local non-profit such as the California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Relief Fund.

 

Pictured Above:

A charred wheelchair in Paradise Gardens senior community during Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif.. on Thursday, November 8, 2018.

Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

(Source)

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Your texting ban isn’t working: Takeaways from NHPCO

Recently, the QliqSOFT team exhibited at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization‘s annual Interdisciplinary Conference in New Orleans. Over 1,000 providers of end-of-life care gathered to learn about the changing face of their rapidly growing industry. We enjoyed numerous conversations with nurses and providers alike – all focused on the challenges they face in providing care to their patients.

 

One connecting theme during those conversations highlighted a growing need for secure, effective communication between nurses in the field, their home offices, and even the family caregivers of their patients. There’s no question that texting is a go-to means of connecting team members, especially when there is not secure alternative like our own Qliq Secure Texting in place. However, what struck us as odd was the fact that the majority of these organizations were experiencing one of two scenarios:

 

1. Administrators know that their employees are using standard, non-secure SMS texting, but they turn a blind eye. 
2. Administrators had in place a full fledge texting ban in hopes of eliminating the threat altogether.

 

While category 1 is clearly a HIPAA data breach waiting to happen, category 2 is more concerning. A ban on any form of texting merely checks a box and often creates a dangerous atmosphere of cloak and dagger covert texting where employees try to find creative ways to skirt sensitive, identifying patient information… all in the hopes to provide better care for those patients.

 

Covert Texting is Nothing New

 

We’ve covered this before in previous blog posts. People love to send text messages. It’s portable, convenient, immediate, and fairly reliable. It allows users to be flexible in how and when they respond to messages without being burdened by certain rules. But despite the convenience, standard SMS texting is just not secure. Our conversations at NHPCO just add to the anecdotal evidence that this practice in healthcare is still alive and well. But why?

 

Many in healthcare share a strong belief that communication as a practice is broken. The Joint Commission consistently identifies poor communication as the root cause of medical errors. With such pressure to maintain this and other accreditations, providers are forced to choose between relying on a broken system or an unsecure method of communication in order for basic, effective care to continue.

 

Secure Communication at Your Fingertips

 

Administrators need to realize that focusing on banning something deemed effective by users only creates extensive liability issues down the road. This is where secure texting vendors can play a pivotal role in taking your staff’s clinical communication out of the shadows. Secure texting provides an easy-to-use interface that is familiar to your covert texters and allows them to not only communicate with their colleagues but do so efficiently.

 

Secure messaging platforms are built to be HIPAA compliant, so real conversations around patients can take place without worrying about skirting identifying information that could lead to clinical errors. Many vendors even take security one step further by allowing for personal devices to be used without the risk of mixing PHI with personal data, such as photo galleries and standard SMS texting. This Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach means that IT departments and other administrators don’t have to worry about providing devices for their employees and realize a major cost savings.

 

 Your Next Steps to True Clinical Collaboration

 

To see how secure texting can be easily rolled out across your organization, be sure to request a quick, 30-minute demo here. Our team is ready to show you how easy it is to turn your standard SMS liability into a secure texting win.

 

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QliqSOFT Announces Integrated Secure Texting Partnership with American HealthTech

QliqSOFT, Inc., a leading provider of secure clinical communications solutions along with electronic health record (EHR) developer American HealthTech (AHT) are pleased to announce a partnership that will provide the option for secure texting solutions to caregivers across the AHT customer base.

 

“Our secure texting platform has already been adopted by over 1,000 customers in the acute, ambulatory, and post-acute spaces,” says QliqSOFT CEO, Krishna Kurapati, “so we’re extremely excited to introduce true clinical collaboration into the world of sub-acute.”

 

Qliq Secure Texting is packaged within the recently announced AHT Communications Center which, has already been implemented across multiple test sites is expected to be installed in 1,300 locations by the end of the year. This partnership ensures that caregiver communication will remain secure and HIPAA-compliant while offering the peace of mind that messages concerning patients are being delivered and read by the intended recipients.

 

“The delivery of AHT Communication Center demonstrates how we listen to our clients’ needs and turn their ideas into innovative solutions,” said Boyd Douglas, president, and chief executive officer of American HealthTech’s parent company, CPSI. “Enabling secure, patient-centered communication is another example of our effort to assist skilled nursing facilities of all sizes in improving the way they provide quality patient care.”

 

About QliqSOFT, Inc.

 

With its unique cloud pass-thru architecture, QliqSOFT’s Secure Texting, On-Call Scheduling, and Clinical Collaboration solutions are trusted by over 1,000 Hospitals, Home Health, and Hospice Organizations to deliver HIPAA-compliant, reliable, and real-time communication between doctors, nurses, caregivers, and patients. To learn more, visit www.qliqsoft.com.

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How Telehealth can Increase Patient Engagement in Post-Acute Settings

Are the days of doctor house calls poised to come back? Now that we have sophisticated, high-speed data networks and readily available technology to facilitate telehealth for “virtual” house calls, more healthcare providers are starting to deploy telemedicine in an effort to provide better care outside of the traditional setting (hospital, doctor’s office, clinic and so on).

 

Your nurses out in the field are able to work with telehealth services to follow up with patients more readily than would occur if the patients had to come to see you instead of you visiting them.

 

When it comes to addressing patient needs in post-acute settings, you and fellow stakeholders in your medical organization naturally will have a vested interest in promoting better patient engagement. Improved engagement can lead to better outcomes in patient health as well as for your organization’s bottom line. This is because the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services provides reimbursements for providers using telemedicine, as long as they adhere to standards for efficiency and quality of care and are doing the work as economically as possible.

 

However, you may have been avoiding implementing telehealth services so far because of concerns about adhering to patient care standards while still ensuring there is robust security to safeguard each patient’s protected health information or PHI.

 

Whether you are a Chief Medical Officer, Chief Nursing Officer or serve as a Chief Information Officer, it’s in your best interest to ensure that the nurses who will be working out in the field in post-acute environments can follow best practices for telehealth services. This could be for home health, hospice or other medical services that are well suited for distance medicine facilitated with phone calls, data transmissions from sensors, video chats and text messaging.

 

The Effectiveness of Telehealth Solutions on Patient Engagement

 

Medicaid regards telemedicine “as a cost-effective alternative to the more traditional face-to-face way of providing medical care (e.g., face-to-face consultations or examinations between provider and patient).” Indeed, telehealth is designed to allow interactive patient communication using audio and video equipment to allow for real-time, two-way conversations.

 

However, telemedicine does not consist of simply using ordinary phones or video cameras, because of privacy concerns. You need to communicate using robust security. Otherwise, criminal hackers could obtain sensitive PHI and use this information to drain patient bank accounts, steal their identities and commit fraud. What’s also needed is a way to do secure texting. Just like you must guard the details in patients’ medical records from unauthorized access, the content of each text message must also remain confidential.

 

How Telehealth Can Increase Patient Engagement

 

Here are examples of patient engagement being boosted thanks to telehealth efforts:

• Deliver surveys on a regular basis to check engagement. How will you know what patients are thinking and feeling if you don’t ask?
• Capture vitals in a timely fashion, including data from pulse oximetery, heart and breath rate and temperature, as well as wireless glucose meters and weight scales.
• Fast and convenient “follow-up” visits through video conferencing to address a slew of new and complex questions that arise at home after the patient’s discharge.
• Provide ongoing patient education, such as videos for self-care in between visits from the healthcare provider.

 

Trends in Telehealth

 

Before making a presentation to your fellow stakeholders about telehealth, it pays to become more acquainted with developing trends. Data analytics and collecting patient data automatically is predicted to increase in 2018 and beyond, according to a report from the Arizona Telemedicine Program. This is accomplished with sensors for patient self-monitoring, such as for ECGs along with smartphone apps. About 65% of interactions in 2018 will take place using mobile devices.

 

Rural communities with limited access to local healthcare providers are now experiencing patients using the latest smartphones with high-resolution cameras to transmit clear images to physicians. But telehealth isn’t seen just as benefiting patients in remote locations. It is also being touted as more convenient: “More options exist today for the end user to experience home delivery services in the form of internet-enabled devices to handle basic things such as blood pressure, pulse oximetry, glucose, and heartbeat,” according to a report from Healthcare Tech Outlook.

 

The report also noted that “Individuals have the ability to capture basic physiological information one would normally experience in a basic office visit and have it transmitted to their provider. Another growing development is the modular home laboratory kits where a wide variety of lab test conducted with simple blood sticks or urine samples using test strips.”

Considerations When Developing a Telehealth Program for Post-acute Settings

 

When preparing to implement telehealth services, you should carry out a review of the ways you currently store and access PHI, as you will need to be in compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA privacy standards.

 

CMS has granted states the power to develop their own Medicaid telehealth policies, which means that your organization will need to verify the rules for each location where you provide services. For private payers, you’ll need to check whether you will be reimbursed at the same rate for services as if you had conducted them in-house, according to the National Consortium of Telehealth Resource Centers.

 

In order to be reimbursed for telehealth services from CMS, you have to demonstrate that you provide a minimum level of quality of care, economy and efficiency. Keep in mind that each provider on your team must be licensed to practice medicine in each state where you do telehealth. So treating patients across state lines will involve multiple licenses for doctors and nurses.

 

Clearly there are a lot of considerations for boosting patient engagement, especially in post-acute settings. If you are so busy with current duties that you lack the time to become more familiar with telehealth issues or if you are still on the fence about implementing a telehealth solution in your organization, we are standing by to consult with you. Click Here to learn more about QliqSOFT and Telehealth.

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