HORSHAM, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Some of the most challenging work in hospitals today begins after a patient goes home. Most patients end up going home alone with self-directed care as a routine discharge, and frequently with little to no follow-up or interaction from the hospital. When this care fails, it can result in an undesirable and now costly backslide of emergency room visits and readmissions. RightCare Touch, a new app introduced today by RightCare Solutions, Inc., makes it easier to stay in touch with patients after discharge, ensure they’re recovering properly with their personalized care plan, and prevent unnecessary post-acute care services and readmissions.
Based on software developed by AirCare Labs LLC, a DreamIt Ventures company that RightCare acquired earlier this year, RightCare Touch helps hospitals, payors, accountable care organizations (ACOs), and post-acute care providers engage patients through daily contact. Using that feedback, hospitals and ACOs can identify patients considering a trip to the emergency department (ED), uncover patients who don’t know they’re failing at-home treatments, and alert clinicians to engage the patient and avoid unnecessary ED visits and readmissions.
“Healthcare reform is forcing hospitals to extend their care beyond the hospital facility and into the home,” said Eric Heil, Founder, President, and CEO of RightCare Solutions, Inc. “The CMS’s recent mandate for 90-day orthopedic bundle payment programs, coupled with the reality that about 20 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are re-hospitalized within 30 days of discharge, highlights our need to better understand patient needs and risks when they go home. With RightCare Touch, we’re helping hospitals in bundled payment programs and ACOs engage patients daily with personalized care plan checklists to proactively monitor progress and correct the recovery course when issues arise. That engagement is key to reducing ED visits and readmission rates while delivering patients the best care possible.”
Using RightCare Touch at the time of discharge or after discharge, clinicians, outpatient nurses, or case managers can create a custom checklist of four to five questions for each patient, such as questions about medication taken, drowsiness and sleep quality, daily weight, and more. Answered via phone, text message, computer, or video, these questions help guide efforts to monitor the patient’s progress. RightCare Touch gathers the patient’s daily answers into heat maps that alert the hospital to potential problems at a glance.
If a patient does not have a smartphone, the same customized checklist questions will be delivered via interactive voice response (IVR) to the patient’s home phone or cell phone through RightCare Touch’s automated texts or calls. In some cases, wireless or wearable medical devices, such as a blood pressure cuff or WiFi-connected scale, can feed directly into the app.
RightCare Touch is available in iTunes and will soon be available in Google Play. For more information on RightCare Touch and the entire spectrum of RightCare software, visit www.rightcaresolutions.com.
About RightCare
RightCare is a Philadelphia-based medical technology company that helps hospitals and health systems reduce readmissions and optimize post-acute care delivery. RightCare's software identifies the risk and needs for all patients at admission, matches patients to the right level of post-acute care and applicable community-based services, connects seamlessly to post-acute care providers, and engages patients directly with personalized care plans. The company's proprietary technology was developed through a decade of research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. For more information, please visit www.RightCareSolutions.com or follow us on Twitter at @TeamRightCare.
