Staff stress and quality concerns have hospice providers increasingly relying on technology to streamline end-of-life care delivery, time and experience.
According to Laura Templeton, executive vice president and COO of Compass, artificial intelligence (AI) and remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems can be worth the financial investment in terms of creating operational efficiencies that benefit patient quality. .
Templeton said at the Aging Media Network Continuum Conference in Washington, D.C., that leveraging technology will be key to quality outcomes as hospices and home health providers work amid increased workforce demands.
“Thinking about the future as we move health care forward, we’ve built capacity for our nurses, chaplains, social workers and physicians,” Templeton said at the conference. “It has a human element and it has a patient-centered care element that helps advance healthcare as a whole. We can help build capacity and enhance the overall patient experience. are.”
Compass is a portfolio company of private equity firm Towerbrook Capital Partners and health system Ascension Health.
The Tennessee-based company provides a continuum of home services, including home health, home infusion, palliative care and hospice, from more than 250 locations in 29 states, partnering with health systems and other healthcare providers. Includes burning partnerships.
Compass has been expanding its use of technology over the past few years. According to Templeton, the company has increasingly integrated AI tools to help identify bottlenecks in clinical workflow, such as ways to reduce nurses’ travel times.
Compass has also implemented a predictive analytics tool, called the Journey program. Through the tool, the company developed a system of key performance indicators (KPIs) in a patient’s electronic medical record (EMR) that helps medical teams identify patterns of worsening conditions and tailor care plans as needed. .
Developing these indicators around a patient’s condition has been a big part of improving access to timely, appropriate hospice care, Templeton said. Using AI and RPM technology can help hospitals understand where gaps exist in their service lines and strategies to close them, he said.
“One of our goals and objectives was to really get patients to the right care at the right time,” Templeton said. Better experience on the hospice line, and reduced mortality on home health. So [it’s] Making sure you’ve established KPIs for what success looks like, according to you [technology] Partner through it and then constantly make sure we pivot or adjust when we’re not seeing what we need to see.
According to Jordan Holland, vice president of value-based contracting at Compass, the home health and hospice space will likely see increased use of technology that improves the delivery of patient care.
Holland said clinical capacity needs and the ability to improve quality are indeed driving forces, but others include broader acceptance and use of technology among patients and families. Even before the telehealth boom during the pandemic, adoption of new technology was accelerating as hospitals and home health providers sought to increase patient engagement, he said.
Technology costs are trending downward as RPM and AI systems expand in volume and variety, making integration a more affordable option, Holland said.
“I think patient engagement-type technologies will become more common,” Holland said. “We’re getting to a point where there was a lot of cost associated with their development that has come down significantly, and then a lot of use cases where these kinds of things can be really effective. [With] Remote patient monitoring … there is a lot of value in just being able to communicate with that patient.