Indiana-based healthcare software company Olio has partnered with Indiana University Health to improve communication between healthcare provider teams within acute-care hospitals and nursing homes.
“In any given year, IU Health refers patients to more than 350 different nursing homes, so it’s very easy to lose sight of patient care once they are discharged,” said Anthony Sorkin, M.D., executive medical director of population health at IU Health.
Sorkin said his department was in the process of piloting Olio in three hospitals before the pandemic hit, and quickly expanded their use of the platform to include all IU Health hospitals once COVID-19 became a public health crisis. The platform is now helping coordinate patient care and reduce the further spread of coronavirus in Indiana.
Olio provides nursing home staff with quick access to guidance from IU Health’s physicians when it comes to monitoring and proactively treating approximately 1,500 nursing home residents in more than 150 nursing homes.
This helps reduce the risk of patients who are displaying COVID-19 symptoms from being unnecessarily transferred to the hospital, which could expose healthcare workers, emergency room staff and other patients to the potentially life-threatening illness.
The system also alerts hospitals to escalating numbers of nursing home residents with COVID-19 symptoms, allowing for faster care response, and it provides hospitals with a valuable heads-up before symptomatic nursing home patients are transported to hospital emergency departments. In addition, the platform allows nursing homes to share numbers of available beds and other data with hospitals and all participating nursing homes through an online dashboard. This feature helps speed up hospitals’ patient transports to nursing homes with bed vacancies.
