Overwhelmed to Amazed: how remote care programs help practices and wow patients

Successful remote care programs really “Wow” patients

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Patients living with multiple chronic health conditions and dealing with today’s medical system are overwhelmed. With seamless remote care management programs, however, you not only take away the overwhelming aspects of providing excellent remote care, but you also significantly improve the patient experience and patient outcomes. When you can provide highly personalized, high quality care and patients have improved outcomes, a point person that they can talk to or reach in a time of need and satisfying relationships with their care partners - that’s the wow. It’s highly engaged, very satisfied patients, getting better, high quality comprehensive care.   

Senior healthcare right now is getting harder and more disconnected than ever. Even with deeply caring and committed practices, circumstances for seniors and senior care are complex.

Older patients are often lonely and don’t have caregivers or someone to talk to. Remote care management programs provide a dedicated care partner (medical assistant) to work with, talk with and provide personalized support to each patient. The relationships they build help reduce loneliness and build connection, but also help improve health outcomes and quality of care that improves when there is someone checking in on these patients.  

For seniors living with multiple conditions, the changing nature of healthcare - including more buy-outs, fewer practices, fewer providers, long waits and fewer and fewer ways to reach a provider or providers' office, is taking a toll. Even when a patient has a good and caring doctor, and is able to get in, senior healthcare typically ends at the office, after an office visit. Adding in remote care management allows for continuous personal touch points with a clinical care partner throughout the weeks and months between in-person appointments, and has been shown to improve the quality of care, outcomes, satisfaction and connection. Also, it gives patients the best of both clinical worlds where they see the benefits of a larger health system with a larger team from the added remote care and care partners, and the personalization of a small practice, both with their in-clinic doctor and remote care management care partners.  With remote care, you’re increasing the touch points and spheres where patients receive connection and care - improving loneliness, disconnect, the amount of care, the range of care and therefore, the quality of care provided to patients. 

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The benefits of adding remote care programs to your practice

The impact and metrics of remote care management on patients are significant. 

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Remote care management programs:

• Increase patient satisfaction
• Increase health outcomes
• Increase the range and quality of care provided
• Decrease hospitalizations
• Decrease readmissions

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Overwhelmed to amazed, or struggling to excellent - if you do remote care management well, you have the opportunity to improve your operational systems, wow your patients and provide great care.  A high quality remote care program will improve your practice operations, systems and infrastructure - which helps improve your practice across the board for staff, patients and healthcare in general; AND a high quality remote care program will improve the health and lives of your patients - by improving the efficiency of the care, the effectiveness of the care, patient and provider satisfaction, good health outcomes, decreased loneliness and overall improved metrics for your practice, your team and your patients. 

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Going it alone is often overwhelming 

Remote care management programs are difficult for a practice to run on their own. It takes a lot of time and resources to run a remote care program - time, staff and resources most practices don’t have and can’t sacrifice. Most practices are already busy doing lots of other things for patients.

While remote care management programs improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of a practice, and significantly improve patient care - it takes a lot of work for a practice to run one. Running a program yourself requires a lot of effort and cost.

There are many companies doing basic remote care programs, but many are just third-party vendors - not partners offering full services.  With unvetted third-party outsourcing, practices often sacrifice accuracy, quality and oversight - and don't reduce much of the work.  Working with a reputable, comprehensive remote care management company can help alleviate the hassle and bring tremendous benefit to your practice and your patients. So this is often a poor option for a practice.

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A successful remote care management program - one that decreases stress and overwhelm for the practice and that improves the efficiency and effectiveness of care - has 3 key elements:  Staffing, Software and Processes. Without these 3 key elements in place, implementing successful remote care management programs can be difficult - and often overwhelming - for practices and patients. 

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Key elements to success and simplification of your remote care management programs 

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Staffing:  

The staffing needs and roles required for a successful remote care program is much more than simply hiring and shuffling a few people.  To run a successful remote care program, your practice will need to build a dedicated workforce or assign dedicated staff to implement and run the program. You’ll need clinical staff, managerial staff and operational staff to make this successful.  Beyond simply hiring, a program requires staffing for program monitoring, training, managing staff and programmatic issues, and someone to make sure that all clinical, regulatory and operational procedures are being followed. The volume of staff needed operationally to appropriately and successfully staff a successful program can be quite overwhelming, and why many practices don’t try  to do programs on their own.  

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Software:

Most practices doing remote care programs on their own are focusing only on the basic elements of using the EHR or use a basic spreadsheet to run their programs. This is neither accurate enough nor sufficient to yield a successful, full-blown remote care program and the range of benefits it could be  bringing to your practice and patients. You need a sophisticated software infrastructure and some depth to the software tools used, to allow you to maximize the benefits of EHR integration and the full range of remote care management programs. Otherwise, you’ll be dealing with insufficient information and sloppy systems, making it hard to have a successful and comprehensive remote care program, which can be overwhelming. Having the proper software infrastructure in place, will allow your practice to document all interactions, track time, create reports, ensure safety and compliance and provide phenomenal care. Sophisticated software infrastructure increases the efficiency and effectiveness of your practice, while also improving health outcomes, health status and patient satisfaction and connection.  

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Processes: 

You cannot have a successful integrated remote care program, without a planned and sophisticated process for implementing the care and managing the programs. It’s not as simple as just telling your team to “do remote care management”. The program’s success depends on how it’s implemented, run and maintained throughout each phase. A proper remote care management program needs protocols, policies and procedures - operational measures for everything from introductions to patient grievance to regularly scheduled monthly or weekly procedural updates. And it requires documentation, reporting and a continuous loop of quality and process improvement measures as the programs are underway. Running a remote care program requires a lot of nimble, operational flexibility and adjustment as things come up. The importance, sophistication and range of procedures that come up to successfully run remote care programs is important, and without proper staffing, operational sophistication and solid infrastructure, can be overwhelming to develop or implement. 

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With all of these things, you can have a really successful and impactful program.

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Medsien helps make excellent remote care possible

Medsien remote care does all of these things, and makes remarkable remote care programs simple and effective. Our remote care management solutions have staffing solutions, sophisticated software infrastructure, established standard operating procedures (SOPs) and policies for highly functional, sophisticated and successful remote care programs. With an ever growing number of technology integrations, you can get up and running with Medsien in just a few days. Hundreds of organizations trust Medsien’s unparalleled technology solutions to deliver a quality experience. 

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• Medsien provides dedicated clinical and operational staff to help implement, run and manage successful remote care management. The staff and patients are closely connected, improving trust, satisfaction and health outcomes. Medsien staff are integrated with your practice teams, increasing the number of team members, but with no added operational complexity or time burden for your staff.

• Medsien is a leading creator of highly sophisticated software systems that begin with seamless EHR integration and then build in data tracking, reporting, procedures, compliance and safety into the programs and procedures. This allows highly efficient, effective care to happen seamlessly.

• Medsien programs currently have 150 SOPs in place for handling day-to-day operations and issues that pop up. These are always being adjusted and growing to accommodate the needs of each practice and patient experience. 

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