Compliance in the healthcare industry equates to providing safe and quality patient care. As home health care together with other healthcare sectors, deals with life and death matters, it is no wonder that the industry is highly regulated. However, compliance may at times prove to be challenging especially when care staff are swamped with paperwork on top of their care delivery responsibilities. This is when technology, particularly an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, comes into the picture.
At Data Soft Logic, we understand your healthcare system struggles. We have developed intelligent and innovative software solutions with compliance — augmenting features that can help you better respond to changing policies and regulations. Once such feature which was developed in response to Title 42 regulations is our newly — launched Care Plan module, available in the newer and more comprehensive home health software, Home Health Centre Ultra (HHC Ultra). To provide you with a deeper understanding of how this new feature improves your agency’s compliance, we answered some of your commonly asked questions.
The Care Plan feature enables your agency to document in detail all identified problems, care goals, and interventions for each patient’s care episode, after the initial assessment is done and the admission process is underway. It is designed to boost compliance and aid you during survey season as it is integrated in the Plan of Care which is one of the medical audit records often requested.
The Care Plan feature allows you to add identified problems in the Physician Telephone Order, add care goals for those problems, and determine the corresponding interventions. You can then set a target date for each care goal and indicate the resolution date in the Communication Notes once the issue or problem is resolved. The system also makes sure that there is minimal manual input that may lead to errors and inaccuracies. As such, the module has readily available templates for problems, care goals, and interventions and you will only need to select the items , as applicable. You also have the option to modify or add your own templates in the Admin Tab under Care Plan Templates.
For better compliance, similar to other HHC features, there are validation tools to notify you if the inputted data is insufficient or incorrect. Once the data is validated and successfully saved, the identified problems, care goals, and interventions will be automatically reflected in the OASIS and Plan of Care, allowing for a seamless, dynamic, and convenient update process. Likewise, you may revise the Care Plan in the OASIS or Plan of Care and the data in the Physician Telephone Order page will automatically be updated. For easy reference and viewing, the Care Plan Profile is also shown in the Patient’s Summary Page.
Unfortunately, not all orders will have the Care Plan feature as it will only be available in the Admission Order, Recertification Order, and Care Plan Order with the last order type specifically designed for problems identified later on in the care episode. As Home Health Centre is an order-driven software, for signs, symptoms, and problems which develop after the initial care plan is done, you may create a Care Plan Order to track these problems. However, you can only do this once the OASIS and Plan of Care are locked to ensure document integrity.
The Care Plan’s deployment process started in early February 2021. You will be notified through the What’s New section in your HHC home pages of the new feature’s availability in your databases a day prior to deployment. You may also get in touch with us here to schedule training for your staff on how to use and take full advantage of this feature.
We, at DSL, continue to innovate and improve our solutions to better address your agency’s and your patients’ daily needs. Through this new feature, the Care Plan module, you can achieve compliance peace of mind while delivering quality patient care. Trust that with DSL, your software will always be on your side. If you have yet to switch to HHC Ultra, schedule a demo with us now to know more on how we can help you.
.png)
