Ohio’s Hospice Partners with Netsmart to Extend Automation and Connect Care Settings

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Ohio’s Hospice, a partnership of eight Ohio not-for-profit, community-based hospices, has partnered with Netsmart to extend a robust technology platform to all of its members in a move that will allow providers to securely and seamlessly share information with other healthcare providers.

Hospice and home health providers are expected to do more with less resources, and the ever-evolving regulatory and payment requirements continue to stretch them. These organizations need more than a basic electronic health record (EHR) to survive and thrive; they need a fully-integrated technology platform that will enable them to share information, prove outcomes and automate referrals.

“Netsmart was the clear choice when it came time to make a decision to roll out an enterprise-wide technology platform,” said Ohio’s Hospice CEO Kent Anderson. “Their ability to scale with our planned growth, proven connectivity and expertise in regulatory requirements will empower our staff to access information that can impact care outcomes and give us the ability to easily report results that will impact our bottom line.”

In addition to impacting the bottom line, the analytics capabilities offered through the hospice clinical quality dashboard will allow Ohio’s Hospice to easily manage hospice quality reporting, success of referral relationships and response to treatment. As just one example, the patient symptom control dashboard will aid in improving the well-being of hospice patients at the end of life.

Instead of manually pulling analytics reports, Ohio’s Hospice will be able to utilize analytic capabilities in the EHR to analyze reimbursement and identify ways to optimize how the staff are using the system. Having this capability built directly into the workflow will eliminate administrative burdens from clinical staff so they can spend more time providing care.

“Hospice and home health organizations now have to prove they are a quality referral partner and one of the ways to successfully do that is through technology,” said Netsmart CEO Mike Valentine. “Ohio’s Hospice is an innovative group of providers that see the value in working together to eliminate barriers to deploying the technology that will help their business thrive in value-based payment models. They have a significant growth road map and this enterprise technology will allow them to onboard new organizations in a matter of weeks.”

Having access to an individual’s full health history can empower providers to make fully-informed care decisions. Connections through the powerful Netsmart network and the Carequality interoperability framework will allow Ohio’s Hospice to connect with the rest of healthcare. Person-centered care requires hospice organizations to share and access information seamlessly with community providers in settings such as acute and primary care. Replacing faxes and information gaps, hospice providers can pull discrete data into a clinical workflow to place less burden on the patient by eliminating the need to fill out multiple forms and answer the same questions many times over. With the Netsmart network, hospice clinicians have full visibility to their patients’ total picture and can focus their limited time on what matters most: the patient.

About Ohio’s Hospice

Ohio’s Hospice is an affiliation of mission-driven, not-for-profit hospices in Ohio committed to a shared vision of strengthening and preserving community-based hospices. Affiliates of Ohio’s Hospice share the values of:

• Providing a patient atmosphere of hospitality, respect and caring
• Attending to the social, physical, and spiritual needs of each person we are privileged to serve
• Preserving and enhancing patient dignity
• Celebrating the life of each individual we serve
• Reducing unnecessary suffering in the communities we serve

The affiliates of Ohio’s Hospice currently serve more than 9,100 patients annually and more than 1,700 patients each day throughout 37 Ohio Counties. Ohio’s Hospice employs more than 1,200 staff.

About Netsmart

Netsmart designs, builds and delivers electronic health records (EHRs), 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 50 years, Netsmart has been committed to providing a common platform to integrate care. SIMPLE. PERSONAL. POWERFUL.

Our more than 1,700 associates work hand-in-hand with our 600,000+ users in more than 25,000 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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