Providing Home Health Providers with Information They Need To Make Informed Patient Care Decisions
"Homecare providers need to have a tightly integrated record between
what they're delivering in terms of clinical activities and their
billing to third-party payers," explains Cerner BeyondNow Director,
Lisa Cone. "Payers are requiring more and more clinical data
measurements to support the provision of services in a patient's home.
They want to ensure those services are having a positive benefit. Our
products unite the clinical services being delivered, the total cost of
those activities and the specific outcomes or benefits."
RoadNotes gives caregivers access to the information they need to make
informed patient care decisions. Using RoadNotes, field clinicians can
admit a patient, access and review the patient's medical chart, share
information with their organizations' central server and with other
RoadNotes users, document their visits, collect OASIS, ORYX and other
measurement data, document supplies used during each visit, review
patient medications, re-certify a patient and more. RoadNotes' SQL
Anywhere database also contains information on community resources such
as vendors, physicians, insurance case managers, hospitals and nursing
homes, as well as medication profiles and electronic timesheets.
"RoadNotes is designed to interact with every aspect of homecare, from
scheduling to the point of service, to the production of a claim and
statement of revenues for the homecare provider - all of the
information management from the patient's bed to payment," says Cone.
"Additionally, the information available within the application can be
utilized by the clinician to make better decisions and support enhanced
patient care services."
SQL Anywhere Chosen for Synchronization Capability, Ease-of-Use and Maintenance, Scalability and Affordability
Cerner BeyondNow looked at a number of solutions including Oracle,
Microsoft and Informix before selecting SQL Anywhere. SQL Anywhere's
bi-directional synchronization capability was a key factor in the
decision because of the need for RoadNotes to integrate and exchange
critical data with Cerner BeyondNow's back-end system, HomeWorks, which
also runs SQL Anywhere. "iAnywhere Solutions' synchronization is
tremendous, particularly as far as the speed and performance it offers
compared to other vendors' solutions," says Cone. "It also enables more
than one clinician to have access to a patient's records at one time,
while automatically keeping those records in sync based on rules the
user can establish. And it's a very user-friendly, maintainable
product, which is important to the customers who don't have DBAs to
manage the system. SQL Anywhere pretty much runs itself. We also like
the fact that it scales from laptops to handhelds and is affordable
enough that we can embed it in our solution."
SQL Anywhere Key to Increased Productivity, Improved Patient Care and Reduced Costs
As Cerner BeyondNow looks to the future, it sees a strong
business-to-business opportunity for its RoadNotes and HomeWorks
products. "We plan to roll out an ASP option by the end of the year,"
explains Cone, "that will facilitate the placement of orders for
everything from medications to supplies and durable medical equipment.
Our systems will push those orders to the appropriate supplier and will
manage the transaction to make sure patients get what they need and
that suppliers get paid."
"Sybase iAnywhere Solutions has been a key enabling technology for us,"
Cone adds. "SQL Anywhere's high performance and bi-directional
synchronization capabilities combined with its low maintenance
requirements and affordability have made it an ideal technology for us.
The reliability and out-of-the-box readiness of RoadNotes is directly
attributable to the stability of iAnywhere Solutions technology. Using
our RoadNotes and HomeWorks products, our customers are achieving
higher productivity, providing their clinicians with better information
which translates into better patient care and they are realizing
reduced costs with the elimination of paper-driven processes."
