How Connected Care Can Perfect Home-Based Care

Traditional methods of patient care require stitching together health information from phone calls, paper documentation, fax records and disparate technology systems. This is a common source of frustration for many post-acute care providers. A recent Porter Research survey of home-based care consumers sponsored by Citus Health reported that patients and family caregivers want more real-time communication from their homecare agency. Real-time communication not only improves patient care and staff efficiency, but also can result in higher consumer satisfaction. In today’s world of instant access, many patients say they would choose a provider based on that provider’s ability to facilitate real-time communication through smartphones, tablets or computers.

With the home-based care market experiencing significant growth, connected care is becoming increasingly essential for clinicians, staff, patients and family members. From the moment a patient transitions into home-based care, there are multiple care team members who must stay connected. And every member of that patient’s care team should have real-time insight into the patient’s status and data in order to provide effective care. Keeping patients and family caregivers better informed leads to higher satisfaction and can improve outcomes and lower the chances of unnecessary hospitalizations.