Amtelco’s 1Call Division announced Care Calls, an innovative approach to reducing hospital readmissions, helping meet Affordable Care Act requirements and reduce costs. Using Care Calls, operators, nurses, or other staff members place proactive calls to patients several days after discharge.
The Care Calls script guides the person calling through a series of questions to ensure patients understand the discharge instructions, address medication questions, and make sure they are not experiencing symptoms that could cause them to be readmitted. Responses are entered into the script, securely stored and available to create reports or saved to the patient’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR). For calls needing specialized handling, patients can be transferred to more skilled healthcare professionals, with all the information already entered in the script.
Scripts can be customized to ask the questions needed for each patient type and can be Web-enabled. Care Calls integrates with HL7 to receive discharge notifications and updates the patient’s EMR at the end of the call.
Amtelco President Tom Curtin said, “Frequent readmissions are a concern for all organizations. We are excited about Care Call’s ability to help dramatically reduce readmission rates.”
Also introduced was IS Smart Paging, extending contact-based messaging and paging to phone users. Using IS Smart Paging callers can send messages to physicians or staff members by the person’s ID. IS Smart Paging announces the person’s status to the caller and prompts a message to be entered. The message is relayed based on the person’s current contact preferences: email, SMS text message, page (TAP, SNPP, and WCTP), fax, and miSecureMessages (1Call’s secure, two-way smartphone messaging app).
Physicians and staff can update their status at any time, using a phone, Web, operator, call center interface, or their miSecureMessages smartphone app. Each individual can have a pre-set status schedule that is automatically updated based on time of day and day of week.
Amtelco Vice President, R&D, Kevin Beale said, “IS Smart Paging offers a unique capability to expand secure communications beyond the traditional operator and Web interface to phone users who may not have access to a computer. The status-driven contact preferences allow each person to control how they can be reached, anytime day or night. This is extremely important in today’s fast-paced environment.”
To learn more contact 1Call at 800-225-6035 or info@1call.com.