DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Phytel, the leader in physician-led population health improvement, announced today that it is launching a new readmission management solution that will help hospitals reduce their readmission rates and enable them to avoid Medicare penalties. The Hospital Readmission Management solution, which will complement Phytel’s existing products for enhancing preventive and chronic care in the ambulatory setting, is the first offering in a new service line that will help healthcare organizations improve post-discharge care and prevent unnecessary readmissions.
“Up to now, there has been relatively little automation of post-discharge care processes designed to make sure that patients understand their discharge instructions and act on them,” commented Steve Schelhammer, CEO of Phytel. “Phytel's new hospital readmission management services are simply a natural extension of the proven capabilities we provide to enable our customers to intervene and engage patients across the full care continuum.”
Phytel’s Hospital Readmission Management solution provides automated messaging to patients discharged from hospitals. Within 72 hours of discharge, patients receive phone messaging that combines a patient satisfaction survey with questions asking whether they understood their discharge instructions or would like to be contacted by the hospital for additional follow-up. Those who do can then be transferred automatically to a hospital nurse help line or a call center.
Phytel also flags patients who do not respond to the survey so members of their hospital care team can follow up with them. Phytel will utilize condition-specific surveys that can differentiate among patients with specific health conditions.
Phytel’s Hospital Readmission Management application is on the same platform as its ambulatory care management services. Healthcare systems will be able to integrate responses to their post-discharge surveys with care management by patients' primary care physicians.
Nearly one in five Medicare patients discharged from an acute-care hospital today is readmitted within 30 days, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will start penalizing hospitals in 2012 for higher-than-expected readmission rates. While timely treatment in EDs can prevent patients from being increasingly readmitted to the hospital, post-discharge care typically receives less attention from hospitals than treatment does. Phytel’s newest solution helps bridge the gap by engaging patients in their own post-acute care.
About Phytel
The premier company empowering physician-led population health improvement, Phytel provides physicians with proven technology to deliver timely, coordinated care to their patients. Phytel's state-of-the-art registry, which now encompasses 20 million patients nationwide, uses evidence-based chronic and preventive care protocols to identify and notify patients due for service, while tracking compliance and measuring quality and financial results. For more information, please visit www.phytel.com. Follow us on Twitter and find us on Facebook.