Healthy Aging
September is Healthy Aging Month, an annual health observance designed to focus national attention on the positive aspects of growing older. Good health ensures independence, security, and productivity as one ages.
Unfortunately, the older population faces chronic diseases, falls, physical inactivity, oral health concerns, and behavioral health issues—issues which the NCOA highlights can severely impact quality of life. Adopting healthy habits and behaviors, staying involved in one’s community, using preventive services, managing health conditions, and understanding all of one’s medications can contribute to a productive and meaningful life according to the HHS.
Role of Virtual Care
As the usage of telehealth has accelerated during the pandemic, home health agencies are now helping their census with “healthy aging” by expanding the use of virtual care. Synzi’s platform helps home health agencies implement a hybrid model of care that supplements in-person visits with virtual engagement.
Synzi strengthens an agency’s care management program by automating several manual tasks and enabling more effective and efficient interventions.
- Synzi offers condition-specific messaging to drive adherence (and lower rehospitalizations) amongst high-risk patients. Agency administrators can also use customize the platform to leverage their home health organization’s (or a referral sources’) condition-specific protocol and guidance.
- Manual tasks such as dialing patients to confirm appointments and check-in with patients can also be automated. Agency administrators can program a series of emails or texts for patients to receive about their upcoming appointments and health care guidance.
- The Remote Patient Monitoring feature helps agencies obtain and review patient data on key measures in order to better monitor at-risk patients and reduce ER visits and rehospitalizations. And, patient assessments can be created and conducted to provide insight into the patient’s progress. The patient’s engagement level and healthcare data can be easily shared with the referring physician to align on the overall care plan.
- Staff can also schedule and conduct remote patient assessments on a regular basis. Assessments provide your patients with multiple opportunities to share progress, highlight issues, and raise any potential concerns which may impact the treatment plan as well as patient satisfaction, and outcomes. This helps agencies prioritize the patients with the most acute need for care and focus on patient who may be at risk for an ER visit or rehospitalization.
The agency’s clinicians can be more productive by using the platform to conduct virtual visits in place of some traditional in-person visits. Multiple participants can be included in these HIPAA-compliant video calls, ensuring that all care team members are aligned on the patient’s next steps including the patient’s family caregiver.
Home health agencies are using Synzi to enable successful aging in place by deploying impactful touchpoints which prevent unnecessary and costly rehospitalizations while improving the quality of life.