Kindred Healthcare Improves Care Access with a Digitized Front Door

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Kindred Healthcare, LLC (Kindred) and Netsmart today announced the successful implementation of Netsmart Referral Manager™ across more than 70 Kindred long-term acute care (LTAC) hospitals. Since introducing the electronic, web-based solution, Kindred has significantly decreased the time it takes to receive and admit a patient. As a result, patients can begin receiving their care much faster.

Kindred facilities currently using Referral Manager are seamlessly receiving and analyzing inbound referrals from partner providers and referral aggregators. Through Referral Manager, Kindred has experienced significant time savings, data accuracy and better transparency, leading to more informed admission decisions.

“Referral Manager has greatly enabled our LTAC facilities to move more quickly and with confidence in getting care to those patients referred to us,” said Kindred Hospital Division Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer Heather Crawford. “We have been able to eliminate items that do not apply to the referral and admissions process and focus on the information that matters. What was once so time-consuming and burdensome is much smoother and more harmonious. We can now deliver care faster, which is important to achieving the best possible outcomes for our patients.”

Referral Manager is a centralized platform that automates and integrates the referral management process. Used on its own or integrated into an existing electronic health record (EHR), it streamlines acceptance and rejections, which allows providers to handle referrals more quickly, in about half the time, and with fewer resources. These capabilities can lead to improved care coordination, effective care transitions, and, ultimately, improved census.

The solution recognizes relevant information and carefully assigns it to appropriate workflows, reducing the need to sift through cumbersome, unnecessary data. It can also aggregate and report all facility metrics, providing actionable insights that enable continued efficiency and improved patient care.

Incorporating existing pre-admission assessments into Referral Manager’s workflows has reduced the time it takes for Kindred’s clinical liaisons to gather vital information and arrive at the best decisions for care delivery to under 30 minutes as opposed to over two hours before Referral Manager. Integrating existing pertinent data into the process reduces the need for unnecessary phone calls, faxes, manual data entry, along with the possibility of human error. This allows Kindred clinicians to focus efforts on determining the most appropriate care plan, getting patients into facilities faster to receive the care they need.

Relevant clinical and financial patient information is also distributed to payers through Referral Manager to help expedite coverage decisions. Sharing this information clearly and thoroughly is essential to reduce payer denials, which is a crucial focus in supporting Kindred’s revenue cycle management goals.

“The insight our staff receives through this technology sets us up for long-term success,” said Kindred Hospital Division Senior Vice President and CFO Garret Jackson. “We can better communicate our referrals to our payers who are enabled to make more informed approvals or denials through the robust data provided in Referral Manager. This allows us to build a consistent admissions stream that leads to a strong census, which ultimately impacts our bottom line.”

When clinicians, staff and payers can make informed admission decisions promptly, patients can begin to receive care sooner.

With Referral Manager successfully launched to all its LTAC hospitals, Kindred is now focused on a plan to implement the solution to its inpatient rehabilitation facilities to help smooth patient transitions.

“This is a big first step in our innovation partnership with Kindred,” said Netsmart CEO Mike Valentine. “By reducing the time it takes to process referrals, Kindred can admit patients faster and begin providing them the care they need. These are the kind of results that confirm we are on the right track. Everyone benefits when electronic, automated solutions, such as Referral Manager, help our clients deliver better care. Together we have our sights on building a new-age post-acute platform that will essentially move the market to a bigger and better place.”

About Kindred Healthcare

Kindred Healthcare, LLC is a healthcare services company based in Louisville, Kentucky with annual revenues of approximately $3.3 billion⁽¹⁾. At September 30, 2019, Kindred through its subsidiaries had approximately 33,800 employees providing healthcare services in 1,723 locations in 46 states, including 70 long-term acute care hospitals, 21 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, 11 sub-acute units, 97 inpatient rehabilitation units (hospital-based) and contract rehabilitation service businesses which served 1,524 non-affiliated sites of service. Ranked as one of Fortune magazine’s Most Admired Healthcare Companies for nine years, Kindred’s mission is to help our patients reach their highest potential for health and healing with intensive medical and rehabilitative care through a compassionate patient experience. For more information, go to www.kindredhealthcare.com. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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^{(1) Revenues for the last twelve months ended September 30, 2019.}

About Netsmart

Netsmart designs, builds and delivers electronic health records (EHRs), health information exchanges (HIEs), analytics and telehealth solutions and services that are powerful, intuitive and easy-to-use. Our platform provides accurate, up-to-date information that is easily accessible to care team members in behavioral health, care at home, senior living and social services. We make the complex simple and personalized so our clients can concentrate on what they do best: provide services and treatment that support whole-person care.

By leveraging the powerful Netsmart network, care providers can seamlessly and securely integrate information across communities, collaborate on the most effective treatments and improve outcomes for those in their care. Our streamlined systems and personalized workflows put relevant information at the fingertips of users when and where they need it.

For more than 50 years, Netsmart has been committed to providing a common platform to integrate care. SIMPLE. PERSONAL. POWERFUL.

Our more than 2,000 associates work hand-in-hand with our 600,000+ users in more than 30,000 organizations across the U.S. to develop and deploy technology that automates and coordinates everything from clinical to financial to administrative.

Learn more about how Netsmart is changing the face of healthcare today. Visit www.ntst.com, call 1-800-472-5509, follow us on our CareThreads Blog, LinkedIn and Twitter, like us on Facebook or visit us on YouTube.

Netsmart is pleased to support the EveryDayMatters® Foundation, which was established for behavioral health, care at home, senior living and social services organizations to learn from each other and share their causes and stories.

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