Last week I came across this wonderful blog post by Geri Lynn Baumblatt about how critical it is to engage with family caregivers in health care. As someone trained in family systems therapy this really resonated. When thinking about this from the care management perspective, nobody lives in a bubble and as the article states “the patient and the family are the one constant in the care continuum”.
Geri blogs for a company called Emmi; they offer an a excellent piece of technology to assist with ensuring patients, families, and providers stay connected after a hospital stay. It’s called EmmiTransitions that includes the use Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) calls to follow up on various conditions and short media presentations. They provide a variety of education and prompts that can be responded to on a variety of healthcare conditions. It is designed to provide a way to increase education and interaction after a hospital stay…
Here is an of an IVR call example taken right from their website
Here is a video sample of the multiple media program they offer.The sample is educational videos taken right from their YouTube Channel…
In my role as care manager I see enormous potential to help triage patient concerns, provide education, and continue a dialogue after a hospital admission . I immediately thought of the need for discharge care after an inpatient psychiatric admission. This kind of continued education and monitoring has the potential to reduce readmission and improve the quality of care for people.
If you are doing care management, you might want to get in touch with the folks at Emmi about EmmiTransitions and some of the other products they offer. Looks like it could really make an impact.
