Greystone Health is the Gold Winner in the Transitions category. Image courtesy of Greystone Health

Greystone Healthcare Management has received the Gold Award in the McKnight’s Tech Awards competition in the Transitions category for its management of resident transitions.

GHN established the role of a transitional care coordinator, with efforts to help a patient make a successful re-entry into the community. The results are a reduced average length of stay and fewer rehospitalizations, according to Gregg Clavijo-Hopper, Greystone Vice President of Business Development.

“The thing we are most proud of is decreasing our hospitalizations and have patients end up with more successful outcomes,” he said. “The goal was to help our patients from becoming sicker and sicker.” 

The TCC meets with the patient and family and develops a plan, he explained. Afterward, care coordinator schedules the first appointment with a primary care physician after SNF discharge, reconciles medications, coordinates all community-based services and follows up with a patient for up to 90 days after discharge. Using NexusConnexions reports, Greystone can track and manage every patient and caregiver interaction.

Premier Health Care Management received the Silver Award for its use of ADT notification software Patient Ping, which it began using in September 2016. Caregivers can now track patients from when they enter a SNF until 90 days post-discharge. Using PatientPing has allowed the provider system to see if one of its patients was admitted to an emergency department, which has resulted in 500 emails to area hospitals regarding patients in the ER. This has increased awareness and reduced 30-day hospital readmissions, plus benefitted social workers in hospitals trying to find patient placements.

Scheduling primary care physician appointments reduced hospital readmissions by around 50% for those in the Ping system compared to those who were not, the provider said.

Kindred Healthcare received the Bronze Award for its creation of the nationwide Kindred Contact Center, which features a direct line for patients and families to learn where to place a loved one. Kindred’s Information Systems organization and the Contact Center operation teams collaborated, and technology integrated with the KCC platform include call management/routing/IVR systems, referral management, automated benefits verification, payer contract verification and a custom OCR/document intelligence solution. Other integrated systems include custom developed automated bed management, reporting modules, and and a Patient Relationship Management component. All systems are tightly woven together to provide workflow and integration to nurse advocates and KCC operations.

Charlie’s Place Activity and Respite Center in Baton Rouge, LA received a Certificate of Merit for its use of the It’s Never 2 Late system.  Pruitt Health Fitzgerald Nursing Home in Georgia also received a Certificate of Merit for using observations and data to address resident dissatisfaction and improve survey scores.

The McKnight’s Tech Awards program is sponsored by CareRise.

To read about the Innovator of the Year winners, which were announced Tuesday, click here. To read about the High Tech/High Touch winners, announced Wednesday, click here. For the Quality winners, which were announced Thursday, click here. To read about the Dignity winners, click here.