Hospitals are under the microscope for lowering the overall cost of care – including the related lengths of stay and readmission rates – while strengthening patient engagement. To minimize penalties and maximize performance, institutions are seeking out home health agencies which efficiently and effectively “bring the hospital to the home.” Agencies which can show higher patient satisfaction scores, lower readmission rates, and more quality rankings are invaluable to these referral sources. As a result, many home health agencies are implementing virtual care communication platforms which help them engage the institution’s discharged patients – leading to improved outcomes and increased referrals from these sources.
These competitive-minded agencies are also increasingly aware that they will receive a higher reimbursement rate for institutional referral sources versus community sources under PDGM. As 2020 is approaching, astute agencies are aligning their goals – better care, better outcomes, better margins – with like-minded hospital and SNF partners. However, cultivating relationships with hospital / SNF discharge planners takes more than a simple “meet and greet.” Smart agencies are proving how they can deliver the best care – meaning, care that is timely, responsive, and appropriate for each patient and their respective family/home situation – in the post-acute stage with virtual care.
Synzi’s HIPAA-compliant virtual care platform allows staff to continually communicate with patients via video, email, text, and secure messaging in order to check on patient progress and reinforce the treatment plan without compromising the patient experience.
- With Synzi, an agency’s administrator can schedule a cadence of communications designed to deepen patient understanding and engagement about one’s role in self-care. The messaging can also reflect the referring partners’ protocol for the specific patient and treatment pathway.
- Referral sources also value the Synzi platform’s ability to help a home health agency better engage patients who are part of the Limited English Proficient Population in the United States. With Synzi, these home health agencies are uniquely able to bring an interpreter into a video call with their patients and also translate ongoing messaging into a patient’s primary or preferred language.
- Data on how the patients are responding to requests for video calls, emails, secure messages, and text also help these smart agencies provide a continuous and more realistic perspective of their patients before, during and after each interaction. This reporting is helpful
As the healthcare ecosystem continues to embrace fee-for-value, the Synzi platform positions an agency for success based on its ability to improve overall outcomes while lowering care costs for all stakeholders. Using Synzi’s platform, home health agencies are experiencing a 40% increase in referrals. With Synzi, home health agencies can be more competitive, and most importantly, more successful in delivering on the referral partners’ goals of providing patient-centric yet cost-contained care.