Across the country, health systems have made significant investments in recent years installing electronic health records (EHRs) — sometimes spending tens of millions of dollars. Eight years after the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act offered providers incentives to adopt EHRs, many organizations have completed their big push.
While providers overwhelmingly recognize the promise of digital patient engagement, many are still recovering from the time and money investment that comes with an EHR implementation. The last thing many hospitals want to think about is installing another software system.
But what if you knew that the benefits of safer patient care far outweigh the relatively minor expense and resource needs associated with a patient engagement solution implementation?
Patient engagement is simpler than EHR implementation
The hesitation comes from not understanding how relatively simple, inexpensive and quick the implementation of a solution like GetWell Loop can be. A patient engagement solution like ours is different than an EHR system in several important ways:
- Vendor selection: The due diligence that goes into finding the right patient engagement solution is fast and easy. While there are a handful of options on the market, GetWell Loop currently is the only system that integrates with all major EHR systems. The beauty of GetWell Loop is that it can be used as standalone solution if the organization is not ready to integrate it within the EHR right away. That means hospitals can immediately reap the benefits of the patient engagement and remote monitoring technology.
- Implementation cycle: Unlike a 12–18 month EHR rollout, implementing a patient engagement solution like HealthLoop is a standardized process that takes customers an average 72 days from kick-off to go-live. GetWell Loop has physician-created content for more than 150 procedures and medical diagnoses, eliminating the need to create and standardize content.
- Cost: A patient engagement solution like GetWell Loop can be implemented for a small fraction of the cost of an EHR implementation. Rather than bringing in outside consultants, GetWell Loop assigns each customer an internal Implementation Manager that is dedicated to working with your organization’s clinical, operational and IT sponsors.
It’s a matter of patient safety
Hospitals that have implemented GetWell Loop are increasing market share, cutting costs and putting valuable information into the hands of care teams and patients. But perhaps most importantly, by offering the right information to the right patients at the right time, well-informed patients make decisions that prevent adverse and even potentially fatal events.
That’s why a growing number of providers are setting aside reservations about implementing another technology solution. They’re seeing how daily dialogue with patients is an important safety measure, not just a useful tool. Without an automated system for daily check-ins, care teams are much too busy to touch base regularly with patients once they are discharged from the hospital.
While EHRs are important records of what has happened, patient engagement solutions do far more than collect and store information. They give providers insight into what is happening right now with each patient — valuable information as they work to keep patients from returning to the hospital or clinic and deliver care in a more proactive fashion.
Hospitals and health systems have everything to gain from augmenting their EHR investments with a solution like GetWell Loop that is quick and painless to implement. Implementing an automated patient engagement solution for daily check-ins is a fast track to making care safer for everyone.
If your hospital has been questioning whether an automated patient engagement solution will really add value to your organization, now is the time to put those reservations aside. Organizations that delay implementing a solution may be putting patients at risk because patient engagement truly is a safety measure.