After uniting its home health care and facility-based post-acute care divisions, HealthSouth (NYSE: HLS) is now leveraging technology to enhance coordination across the care continuum.
Birmingham, Alabama-based HealthSouth, the largest provider of post-acute services in the U.S., has announced the development of its Post-Acute (PAC) Innovation Center in partnership with Cerner Corporation (Nasdaq: CERN), a North Kansas City, Missouri-based health information technology company.
“The PAC Innovation Center focuses on patient care across settings to facilitate the patient being in the right setting, at the right time, with the right outcome,” David Klementz, HealthSouth chief strategy and development officer, told Home Health Care News. “It’s a longitudinal view of a patient across the continuum.”
The platform will utilize patient data, including electronic health record (EHR) and claims data from HealthSouth and Cerner. That data will be fed into clinical algorithms that will determine the best setting for a patient, identify changes in patient status and recognize at-risk patients so health care providers can intervene if needed. Most importantly, the PAC Innovation Center is designed to enhance care coordination.
“The innovation center will utilize a diverse set of patient-focused clinical information across their continuum of care,” Klementz said. “The tools are focused on leveraging the platforms and data that are in place to manage care across settings.”
Some of the data resources included in the PAC Innovation Center are already being used by HealthSouth providers. In the first quarter of next year, there will be a more complete rollout, beginning with market analytics, according to Klementz.
“The post-acute network management tools currently available in the market have largely been developed either by non-providers with limited clinical expertise or providers that have not made the necessary technology investments to advance efficient, patient-focused care,” said Mark Tarr, HealthSouth president and CEO, in a prepared statement. “The Innovation Center combines our experience with clinical collaboration and our installed IT solutions with Cerner’s leading health information technology solutions and data analytics.”
Written by Elizabeth Jakaitis
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