Electronic Health Reporter

Response from BJ Boyle, senior vice president and GM, acute and payer market, PointClickCare.

The one question healthcare technology professional should be asking right now is: how can we further address the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges that came along with it with the help of technology?

There are a lot of ways to look at this and the ways technology has helped over the past year has already proven to be successful but we need to think about what’s next. With that in mind, healthcare professionals should look at this with a lessons learned lens. Interoperability will continue to be an important trend to watch this year.

We have entered into a new normal and senior care facilities and providers in particular simply need to share data to drive better health outcomes, which is where trusted data frameworks, come into play.

The objective is to connect, send-receive information, and automate admission workflows to help senior care teams ensure more seamless continuity of care for their patients through quickly reconciled medications, diagnoses, and more, with the ultimate goal of reducing readmissions and driving care plans forward.

The current situation has heightened the need to have access to all of patients’ vital information, comorbidities, allergies and medication information and having the ability to share through technology has made all the difference for providers. The ability to see the full view of the patient will allow clinicians to better track patients throughout their entire journey.

Part of this is through tracking referral network patterns.?There is a pattern between hospitals, homecare, and hospice, but it all needs to be brought together through interoperability, which is where technology plays an important role.

The ability to seamlessly transition patients between care settings needs to be addressed through one way or the other.