Michigan health systems and post-acute care providers use CarePort Health to streamline hospital discharge process while maintaining patient and employee safety
BOSTON, MASS. – JUNE 30, 2020 – As hospitals across Michigan reached or exceeded capacity during the COVID-19 surge, the market-leading care coordination platform from CarePort Health enabled more informed hospital discharges to post-acute care, helping maintain patient and employee safety. Faced with the challenge of identifying post-acute providers that were willing or able to accept COVID-19 patients, hospitals such as Michigan-based Henry Ford Health System collaborated with CarePort to determine how best to achieve safe transitions and ensure patients received the appropriate level of care.
“Understanding the pressures and resource constraints that our customers faced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our team acted quickly to determine how the CarePort platform could help,” said CarePort CEO and founder Lissy Hu, M.D., “In response, we developed COVID-19-specific product features that enabled real-time communication and streamlined processes between acute and post-acute providers to help ensure the safety of their patients and staff.”
Using the CarePort platform, hospitals proactively communicated COVID-19 testing status to post-acute providers, both pre- and post-discharge. As a result, post-acute providers could take the necessary measures to protect staff and patients, as well as manage the use of personal protective equipment.
Post-acute providers could also update their bed availability daily and indicate their willingness and ability to accept appropriate COVID-19-positive patients, all within the CarePort platform. This functionality allowed hospitals to more easily identify post-acute providers accepting COVID-19 patients, minimizing time spent by discharge planners and case managers calling individual facilities to determine their capabilities and capacity.
Susan Craft, R.N., vice president of inpatient case management and post-acute care services at Henry Ford Health System, says the platform allowed their providers to better communicate with post-acute facilities and coordinate transitions of care more effectively: “Given the unprecedented nature of this crisis, communication between our hospitals and skilled nursing and inpatient rehab facilities was critical to ensure the safety of patients as well as the staff at the receiving facilities,” Craft says. “This technology allowed us to provide information in real-time to our community partners so they would be prepared for patients upon their arrival.”
Post-acute care providers were able to proactively place patients in the appropriate setting as a result of this collaboration and communication. The Marvin & Betty Danto Health Care Center in West Bloomfield, Mich. established an antechamber for COVID-19-positive patients, as well as a system for transferring recovered patients to limit the spread of infection to patients and employees. The Center has also created a unit specifically for those exhibiting symptoms or for whose COVID-19 status is unknown.
“We have always viewed Henry Ford as a true partner, but during COVID-19 we have experienced unparalleled collaboration using the CarePort platform,” said Meredith Maurer, Manager, Market Development for the Heartland Facilities of Metro Detroit, which includes the Heartland-Danto Health Care Center. “Leveraging CarePort, we have achieved a higher level of communication and transparency with hospital partners like Henry Ford, ultimately helping us achieve better outcomes for our patients.”
Joe Carpino, Senior Administrator of the Heartland-Danto Health Care Center, added: “By working in close collaboration with Henry Ford hospitals, we feel well-prepared to care for the patients transitioning from the hospital to our facility. Through CarePort we’ve gained complete visibility into a patient’s COVID-19 status to help ensure the health and safety of not only our patients – who are most vulnerable during this time – but also our staff.”
Join CarePort on Wednesday, July 22 at 11:00 a.m. ET for “COVID-19 in Detroit,” a virtual care coordination summit where payers, hospitals – including Henry Ford Health System – and post-acute providers will share how they worked together to successfully coordinate care during the COVID-19 surge in Metro Detroit. Register here.
