Chris Pugliese
Apr 14 2022
Reading Time: 4 minutes
By: Chris Pugliese, Senior Product Manager, CitusHealth
One of the biggest challenges of providing healthcare is keeping track of the regulatory requirements that vary from state to state and county to county, as well as making sure all mandated forms are filled and submitted accurately and timely. When organizations go through the motions and just check the boxes when meeting these requirements—without focusing on the patient or staff experience—important details will be missed.
Another significant challenge facing the industry is employee retention. With many organizations still using dated, manual documentation methods, staff are stretched thin and often forced to do more with less.
Having flexibility in how documentation methods are built can help to meet your employees’ needs and the needs of external stakeholders. Here are a few ways customized forms can help support your organization.
Customized forms support compliance for home-based care
As regulatory requirements in home-based care continue to tighten, especially as the industry moves into new payment models, it’s increasingly important for providers to have the ability to stay compliant without relying on their EHR.
Having a quick and easy tool that helps you meet requirements all the way down to the local level—one that makes it easy for your team and patients to use—helps ensure nothing goes missed, whether it’s regulatory or care related.
Local health programs
Since regional and local health programs have such varying requirements, most EHRs model their requirement methods around national-level regulations like Medicare. Beyond standard Medicare forms, organizations need to customize their documents to capture the information that varies from state to state and county to county.
When you lack this type of form customization, you’ll be forced to put everything on paper, which means things get lost and revenue will be impacted. In the end, it affects your organization’s ability to grow and take on more patients.
Non-traditional healthcare
Non-traditional healthcare methods like music therapy and other referrals often require a state-specific or locality-specific form that must be completed. If you lack the operational efficiency to handle this type of care, you may not meet patient expectations.
Customized forms support patient satisfaction in home-based care
In home-based care, we often forget that most patients are very sick, and that means they likely have many other wellness concerns. With the ability to collect information not required by the state, the focus shifts from regulation to the patient.
Just after an acute event, when patients are in an out-of-hospital care setting, can be one of the most difficult times of a person’s life and their family caregivers. When providers customize the way they communicate and interact with those they care for, they get a complete view of wellbeing. Surveys are a great way to help you achieve this level of care, here are two examples:
Patient surveys
Having the ability to reach out to patients and caregivers with a customized survey to inquire about their wellbeing elevates the level of care—and satisfaction—you’re able to provide.
Employee surveys
When large organizations have hundreds or even thousands of employees, it can be challenging as an executive to know how your employees are doing. And with such a tight labor market happening in the industry, where it’s difficult to find and retain talent, it’s important to have a tool that can operate both externally and internally—allowing you to seamlessly communicate with patients and team members.
With customized forms, employees can receive a mobile survey, making it easy for them to fill out on the go. It’s in the same tool they use every day to communicate with patients, which is vital to collecting the real on-the-ground information for how your employees are doing.
Happy employees deliver the best possible care, which results in happy patients and caregivers. By gauging your employee satisfaction regularly, you can make them feel valued and ensure they have everything they need to do their jobs well.
Customized forms support patient and staff safety in home-based care
Customized forms can help organizations track infection and vaccination, an important element of care as we’ve experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic. By sending out COVID-19 surveys to both employees and patients, you can track symptoms, exposure, and other data—ensuring your staff and those they care for remain safe.
Without customization, patient care suffers. Request a demo to experience how CitusHealth can empower your organization with customized forms.
