Curaspan Health Group unveiled its new DischargeCentral technology on Wednesday. The software-as-a-service application helps streamline patient transitions from one level of care to another.
DischargeCentral is an evolution from the firm's eDischarge application, which creates secure electronic patient-transition networks connecting hospitals, post-acute providers and suppliers.
eDischarge is currently used by more than 10,000 providers at 380 hospitals and 3,500 post-acute care providers. Curaspan customers include Johns Hopkins Health System, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Riverside Health System, Sentara Healthcare and more.
Starting today, Curaspan has begun moving its eDischarge customers to DischargeCentral in a four-stage rollout that will be completed by December, says Thomas R. Ferry, the company's founder, president and CEO.
Discharge Central enhances eDischarge's core application "significantly," says Ferry. It had been replatformed to provide "better performance given the significant number of people that are signing on each day," and boasts an easier-to-navigate user interface with more functionality
"Discharge planning happens with all providers – not just in acute care settings, but in post-acute as well," says Ferry. This redesign of the technology makes it applicable in all care environments.
That will be key in the coming era of accountable care, says Ferry.
"We took a look at the landscape and found that as organizations are driving toward ACOs, and you have to have more seamless hand-offs in all provider settings, we wanted to make sure our application would be useful in all those settings."
For example, he explains, "a post-acute care provider that needs to discharge a patient to another level of care, including back to the hospital, can easily use DischargeCentral to be more efficient than ever and contribute to better care outcomes and financial results."
DischargeCentral is part of Curaspan's Synchronized Patient Management portfolio, which also includes ReferralCentral for referral management and RideCentral for ordering and dispatching non-emergent transport.
Officials say Synchronized Patient Management fosters collaboration among the various participants along the continuum of care by enabling them to share the same patient records, results and reviews, from a user-specific point of view.
"We think that Synchronized Patient Management is central to provider success in managing patient transitions," added Ferry. "It's a proven and unique combination of a shared technology platform that supports workflow automation which, in turn, drives the automatic capture and display of business intelligence. With that data comes more-informed decision-making and better results. "
