PRM Soft

Caregivers and other nursing facility staff including nurses, rehabilitation therapists, social workers, and recreational therapists each report saving up to 1 hour/day/shift with electronic documentation over paper records. This has enabled them to spend more time with patients and other care-related activities.

Situation

Healthcare providers are finding it increasingly difficult to deliver quality care in the face of declining reimbursement and mounting regulations and costs. The long-term-care industry has been particularly hard hit in recent years with declining Medicare funding and shrinking Medicaid reimbursement.

In this environment of constrained resources, most nursing homes operate with inefficient handwritten paper-based clinical records that decrease the productivity of nursing caregivers, increase patient waiting time, and raise the risk of medical errors. This has contributed to caregiver frustration, patient and family dissatisfaction, and quality care problems in this vulnerable population. Under these conditions, it is very difficult to deliver patient-centric healthcare. Because of inadequate software, nurses are spending too much time on paperwork and not enough time with patients. This has contributed to the current severe shortage of nurses in the U.S. Nursing home patients and their families could be better served if a simple, advanced information technology existed that could enable nurses to access, document, and share clinical patient information in real time.

Solution

PRMsoft is a provider of integrated workflow software for the long-termcare industry. PRM stands for Patient Relationship Management—a patented business process methodology that describes how a real-time healthcare information system with authorized access by all interested parties can utilize Customer Relationship Management (CRM) principles and deliver patient-centric care, improve patient/family satisfaction, and improve clinical and financial outcomes.

The company's Web-based software puts CRM into healthcare, focusing on patient/customer service, satisfaction, and retention. The software also views healthcare facility employees as "internal customers" giving them software tools that facilitate workflow and enable them to provide care in a more satisfying manner.

A suite of integrated modules are accessed locally or remotely over the Internet through a simple, Web browser user interface. These modules help nursing-home caregivers deliver more customer-focused healthcare by allowing them to document care more rapidly and efficiently, enabling them to save time and spend more time with patients.

Since the software is web-based, written in open standards, and platformindependent, it is "future-ready," able to integrate with other open-standard Web applications and business-to-business commerce solutions.

Better Health & Lower Costs

The PRMsoft software facilitates everyday healthcare processes and procedures, thus improving quality of care and lowering costs. The system increases efficiency, improves productivity, and facilitates regulatory compliance. It provides clinical alerts in real time, improves workflow efficiencies, and reduces administrative overhead. Clinical managers are provided with real-time information on resident outcomes, staff performance, and task completion.

The system has provided significant time savings. Caregivers and other nursing facility staff including nurses, rehabilitation therapists, social workers, and recreational therapists each report saving up to one hour/day/shift with electronic documentation over paper records. This has enabled them to spend more time with patients and other care-related activities.

Regarding reduced expenses and improved productivity, one study revealed that following the introduction of the PRMsoft system, the average monthly nursing over time was reduced by 20%, mostly due to time saved with electronic over paper documentation. A survey revealed that rehabilitation therapist productivity increased as much as 25% following implementation of PRMsoft's electronic medical record. Each rehabilitation therapist reported saving approximately one hour/day on their shift, allowing them to spend more time on patient treatments and less time on documentation. The electronic medical record also eliminated wasted time searching or waiting for paper medical records to become available.

There are other benefits to the system. The accessibility of clinical data has improved collaboration that has contributed to more efficient and effective care. The system has provided for improved legibility and quality of documentation, has increased revenue capture, and has improved staff recruitment. There is a high satisfaction level with managed-care case managers who are able to review typed progress notes rather than oftenillegible handwriting.

The PRMsoft electronic medical record software system provides a strong information environment that has brought dramatic improvements in the delivery of nursing-home care. The system serves as a model for nursing homes nationwide demonstrating the advantages of low cost, browserbased software and how it can be used to improve clinical and financial