VNA HealthCare, a home healthcare, hospice and independent living service in Connecticut, is moving to automation.
VNA HealthCare will use Chicago-based Allscripts Homecare technology to connect providers in 60 communities in the greater Hartford and greater Waterbury areas. Providers will be able to use the home care software system to perform scheduling, administrative and clinical tasks.
"Home care organizations are facing increasingly complex challenges," said Ellen Rothberg, chief executive officer of VNA HealthCare. "To meet these challenges, we need to automate our business with a home care software system that can quickly and easily perform everyday administrative and clinical tasks while rapidly scaling up to meet growing demand or handle new lines of business."
VNA HealthCare also will implement Allscripts Referral Management, which is designed to allow home health, hospice and private duty agencies to track patient referrals in a single system and respond to them faster. The system will receive and respond to all referrals from hospitals, enter referrals from non-electronic sources and collect important marketing information for the organization. It will also automatically transfer hospital referral information into the home care system, which will help cut back on data entry for providers.
"Allscripts is incredibly easy to learn and use with workflow built into it, so there's the potential for a lot of efficiencies," said Nancy Culos, project leader for the Allscripts implementation and former vice president of clinical operations for VNA Healthcare. "Essentially, we think of it as an electronic health record for home care, which we need in order to decrease paper and filing, and enhance the quality and continuity of care we deliver."
