In the midst of a global pandemic that's taken a toll on just about everyone, every organization and every nation, most of all physicians and nurses on the frontlines of caring for COVID-19 patients, I take some comfort in the bright spots, especially the ways unlikely people and organizations have stepped up to help.
As but one of many examples, I'd like to highlight Javi Kalback and Linda Austin. They started a group, Seacoast Mask Makers, in New Hampshire to make masks for healthcare workers. They're not the only ones, as mask making groups have formed in the Lehigh Valley and throughout the country.
Other organizations are posting ways to help, such as asking healthy people to donate blood. More than 5,000 blood drives have been cancelled, leading to shortages in many places. A nonprofit close to my heart, the Granite United Way, launched a relief fund to help partner organizations respond to the pandemic.
At Geneia, we're doing our part too to help hospitals and healthcare organizations better manage COVID-19 pandemic.
As we recently announced, Geneia has created a tailored version of the Theon® Platform for Care Management (Theon® Care Management) to help physician organizations, hospitals and healthcare organizations assess and triage patients seeking COVID-19 information, resources and care. Starting immediately and at no cost until September 30, 2020, healthcare organizations can use Theon® Care Management to easily triage, outreach to and engage patients for care coordination.
The solution guides a healthcare organization's employee to gather pertinent information to route the patient to the appropriate next best action or outcome. Depending on answers to questions within the solution, inquiring callers will be:
- Directed to educational resources
- Routed to a nurse for clinical assessment
- Routed to the nearest testing location
- Directed to seek care at the emergency department
The free license* of Theon® Care Management available for COVID-19 triage and patient management is a lightweight, tailored solution that leverages critical functionality from the complete version of Theon® Care Management to support healthcare organizations contending with unprecedented call volumes. It is powered by Salesforce Health Cloud. Salesforce has offered qualified emergency response teams, call centers and care management teams for health systems affected by coronavirus free access to Health Cloud.
Simplifying care management helps patients, nurses and physicians
The magnitude of COVID-19 strongly suggests the patient populations of hospitals and healthcare systems will grow, potentially exponentially in the coming weeks and months. Healthcare organizations need easy-to-use care coordination tools to triage affected patients, guide the right patients to testing and manage their ongoing care. Given the shortage of doctors in some areas and widespread physician and nurse burnout, it is critical they have easy-to-use-and-implement workflow solutions that help.
Theon® Care Management for COVID-19 triage and patient management also includes a set of reports to help healthcare organizations manage and plan for appropriate resources. A sampling of the available dashboards is below. The solution gives triage and patient management staff the ability to see patient cases reported by state and county, the age distribution of calls related to COVID-19, new cases of COVID-19 over age 60, and more. These dashboards help indicate where – and to what extent – community spread is in progress as organizations consider where additional resources will likely be needed.
Hospitals and healthcare organizations can access Geneia's care management solution by clicking here.
Other health IT organizations also are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. For a list of free resources, visit: https://www.chilmarkresearch.com/covid-19-freehealth-it-resources/.
*Depending on customer needs and requirements, limited implementation and installation costs may apply.