NAVIGATE - Centralized Referral Hub
Who we serve: Clinical Service lines such as Heart & Vascular, Oncology, Limb Preservation & Wound Care, or Neurological Diseases.
Prevent Delays in Complex Patient Care
When patients learn that they might have breast cancer or are newly diagnosed with cancer, the last thing they need is a delay in being seen by an Oncology specialist. The Breast Oncology team at a large Academic Medical Center recognized that they were frequently missing vital medical records for their patients, causing delays in patient care.
The team now relies on careMESH NAVIGATE to manage patients and easily send medical records requests to outside providers and track which records have been received prior to the patient’s initial consultation. Having this information readily available in one centralized Hub, and visible to all team members, has decreased the likelihood of a patient being scheduled without the necessary medical records—preventing delays in patient care.
According to the program’s clinical leader: “What I like about NAVIGATE the most is that it's very transparent. If someone is out on PTO, anyone can pick up where they left off, and there's no interruption in the care coordination process.”
Eliminate Lost Patient Referrals
With staff stretched thin and patient volumes on the rise, the Oncology team in a large Academic Medical Center was struggling to keep up with inbound referrals. Despite best efforts with existing tools (including their EHR), the team was disheartened when 6 patient referrals slipped through the cracks in one month—impacting the timeliness of patient care.
By implementing careMESH NAVIGATE to schedule and manage patients for more than a dozen oncology specialties, the team had a new tool to eliminate the “guessing game” between staff members as they managed patient scheduling, requested medical records, obtained authorizations, and more. Task owners can be clearly identified, helpful reminders highlight overdue tasks, and program leadership benefits from clear visibility into patient status and important program metrics.
According to the Manager of Oncology Support Services, she was “excited to get oncology using careMESH so our leaders can get meaningful analysis of our referrals, while we ensure integrity in follow-up.”
Reduced Amputation Rate with NAVIGATE Long-Term Monitoring
One of the greatest challenges in managing chronic conditions in any specialty is ensuring patient adherence to scheduled care. Patients may be proactive in obtaining an initial consultation but then neglect to return for crucial follow-up visits. This can have dire consequences, especially for patients at risk of losing life or limb.
A growing Limb Preservation program using careMESH saw better oversight and follow-up as an important opportunity in managing their patients. In conjunction with a new ED alerting program, the team is now empowered to intervene sooner and better monitor patients receiving long-term treatment.
Tracking patient routine clinic visits along with better early intervention has reduced the program’s amputation rate 20-25% and increased the endovascular procedure intervention rate by 20%.
According to the Limb Preservation Coordinator: “careMESH is groundbreaking and I am beyond happy that I can utilize NAVIGATE and advocate for the service as much as possible.”
Accelerate Patient Throughput
Competition for cardiac services is on the rise nationally, so inefficiencies in a health system threaten the bottom line. A leading Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) program was seeking to improve how they track referrals, with the goal of accelerating patient throughput and better allocating staff resources.
careMESH NAVIGATE Reporting & Analytics provide this program with new insight into their processes from the time of referral through scheduling, authorization, treatment, and follow-up.
The program gained real-time analytics on key performance indicators such as the Number of new Patients per Month, Avg Time from Referral to Scheduling, Time to Procedure, Total Procedures per Day or Month, and much more.
In comments from the TAVR Program Manager: ““careMESH NAVIGATE provides a one-stop-shop for our team to manage all inbound referrals and provides clear visibility on where patients are in our process.”
SEARCH - National Provider Directory
Who we serve: Hospitals, Public Health, Health Plans, 3rd-Party Systems
Making Price Transparency Data Available to Consumers
Healthcare organizations are mandated by CMS Price Transparency regulations to publish charges for all services offered. And digital health companies are hard at work creating a consumer-friendly marketplace so patients can learn about expected costs.
With careMESH, one valued customer aggregates data to enhance the consumer healthcare experience, mapping services and costs to specific providers and organizations. Using the SEARCH API, they are now able to cross-walk price transparency data with specific healthcare providers nationwide.
With customized API responses they can easily query data for both individual practitioners and their organizations, retrieving locations, contact details, and more.
Manage EHR Provider Directory Data
An Academic Medical Center CIO knew his team needed help managing provider data in the hospital’s EHR. To support their patient population, which includes a large discharge radius and many out-of-state visitors, they must connect with over 25,000 different providers each year.
Initially, he relied on his team. Three IT analysts worked hard to keep their Epic EHR directory up-to-date from over 30 different sources—in addition to managing the “Provider on the Fly” process.
After implementing careMESH, the hospital quickly moved from 30 data sources to one, and communications expanded nationally. And importantly, in a time of staff shortages, team members could eliminate many repetitive tasks and be reallocated to critical new projects.
Healthcare Directory API in Action
The demand for comprehensive and accurate healthcare provider data extends far beyond the caregiver community. A Fortune 100 life insurance company needed a more user-friendly process for members to submit life insurance applications and easily share their medical history with the underwriting team.
The previous process relied on text field for the data entry of provider names and contact information. Submissions were often riddled with typos and other errors, forcing underwriters to spend weeks instead of hours researching and verifying the correct providers to obtain medical records on behalf of the applicants.
With careMESH, the company has accelerated the time between submission and approval and customer surveys show that members are thrilled with the much-improved application process!
Meet Directory Requirements with FHIR APIs
A CMS-regulated health plan was required by the Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule to make its provider directory publicly available for all of its beneficiaries.
To achieve the requirement, they needed an easy-to-use and simple directory FHIR API to support the development of their applications that rely on accurate provider information.
The careMESH National Provider Directory, SEARCH, is built entirely to the FHIR standard so data can be easily integrated into most Electronic Health Records or other third-party applications. This flexible architecture made it possible for the health plan to quickly implement a single, continuously updated source for their directory needs.
CONNECT - Nationwide Communications
Who we serve: Hospitals, Physician Groups, Health Plans
New Revenue for a Clinically Integrated Network
After implementing careMESH in a large urban hospital system, immediate impact was felt across the system’s Clinically Integrated Network (CIN). Not only were members receiving detailed Discharge Summaries and Patient Medical Records in an automated fashion, but the system quickly impacted the practice’s bottom line.
One 150-provider Multispecialty Group had previously relied on an internal care coordination team focused on Transitional Care Management (TCM) to encourage calls from hospitalists at other area hospitals. But without careMESH, this large facility’s patients were not included in TCM programs.
Today, the Group’s office manager receives a careMESH alert upon patient discharge, and enters each patient into the TCM workflow.
In just 20 days, the financial impact was noticeable. With post-discharge summaries received for 74 patients, the group stands to gain an additional $30,000 in revenue.
Share Information With Care Teams
A CMIO of an 1100-bed health system came to us with a problem: community providers viewed his hospital as an information “black hole.”
While physician relations are important, the CMIO was concerned about patient outcomes and knew the system must share accurate, timely patient information with outside providers.
After implementing careMESH, the system quickly began delivering 99.5% of admission, discharge, and encounter summaries to local and out-of-state providers from Epic. And unlike outdated services that require providers to log in and “pull” patient information, careMESH CONNECT “pushes” relevant information to a provider’s EHR or other office workflows.
Now, the entire care team is informed about patient treatment at the hospital and empowered to take action to ensure continuity of care.
Reliably Send Test Results to All PCPs
A CIO of a faith-based hospital system in the Northeast wanted to do a better job of sharing test results with the local community. The COVID-19 pandemic had hit the region hard, and quickly getting results from Cerner into the hands of primary care providers was critical.
The region has a high Medicaid and immigrant patient population, and in many cases English is a second language. Leaning on patients to share medical information with their physician is not the best approach in normal times, much less during a pandemic.
Despite being short-staffed and struggling with extreme financial pressures, the system chose careMESH CONNECT to send admissions and discharges directly to PCPs. From there, the system is staged to expand information-sharing—including lab results, images, much more.
Empower Patients to Send Their Medical Records
As transparency laws take hold and the consumerization of healthcare accelerates patient demand for improved “self-service” capabilities, hospitals are quickly reducing friction for patients to access and securely share their medical records with care team members.
Hospitals using the careMESH SEARCH directory and CONNECT services not only improve how their clinicians can share information with other providers nationwide but they empower patients too.
Each year, careMESH delivers thousands of medical records on behalf of patients. From the patient portal, such as Epic’s MyChart, patients choose “Share My Record” and send to the designated recipient(s).
Using our unique, multi-channel delivery management capabilities, careMESH CONNECT securely delivers patient medical records to any clinician in the country.