Home Health EHR Tech Goes Mainstream on Apple App Store

Aimed at removing barriers for home health and hospice organizations to deliver faster, yet compliant, visit documentation for their patients, Brightree this week launched the next generation of its electronic health record (EHR) platform via the Apple iTunes AppStore.

The new Brigthree EHR point-of-care app is the first “native iOS app” for home health and hospice agencies. Because the app is specifically architected to reside on Apple iPad tablets, its navigation can be joined with CareTouch Logic, Brightree’s underlying intelligence that informs care plan choices and workflows to help keep home health and hospice agencies compliant with clinical best practices. 

In this way, Brightree Home Health and Brightree Hospice are able to go beyond other systems on the market that digitize paper without additional intelligence to guide clinicians through documentation, the company stated in a written announcement.

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“Failing to properly automate documentation while with the patient is proven to reduce care plan and billing accuracy, increase back office costs, put reimbursements at risk and increase the likelihood of audits,” said Brightree President and CEO Dave Cormack in a written statement.

The app synchronizes key data with the cloud-based office system to keep clinicians and office teams on the same page. Built into the app are various features to  help clinicians accurately and completely perform state-of-care assessments, build individualized patient care plans and document against them. 

Additionally, medical diagnosis billing classification requirements, such as International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems-10 (ICD-10) and mandatory quality improvement measures such as the Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) for home health agencies and the Hospice Item Set (HIS), are also included. 

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An “About Me” capability on the app provides an organizational tool to present clinicians important info such as daily tasks, patient records and calendar alerts to let them know when and how to prioritize their days.

The “SmartJump” feature enables clinicians to navigate the different parts of the app to document information as it is learned, so they can follow the “natural flow” of a conversation rather than being tied to a prescribed workflow, Brightree said.

Tapping on the SmartJump icon takes clinicians directly to the appropriate place without requiring them to search around.

“For example, when documenting progress against a symptom requiring medication, clinicians can tap to go directly to the spot in the patient record to note the need to change the does or discontinue the medication,” Brightree said in its release.

In efforts to help home health and hospice organizations move past the barrier of equipping their clinicians and field staff with hardware, Brightree said it will provide funding for up to 10,000 iPad Air tablets for these companies to use.

The promotion has a “buy-on-get-one” format, meaning if a new customer needs 40 iPad tablets to get started, Brightree will reimburse their purchase for 20 of them, the company stated.

“We believe this opportunity is a ‘first’ for home health agencies and hospice organizations,” said Cormack. “We want to help remove the barrier of hardware costs, so they can move forward with a solution that, based on the quality-of-life comments we’re heating from dozens of nurses and other caregivers, truly does have the potential to change everything for them and for their patients.” 

Written by Jason Oliva

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