Stay on Top of Patient Care and Engagement

See how Community Nursing Services Leveraged Cortex to Improve Patient Experience and Increase Reputation for Hospital Referral Partners

In today’s value-based driven reimbursement model, hospitals are scrutinizing the performance of their post-acute referral partners, especially in readmission rates. As pressure mounts for hospitals, reducing readmission to an acceptable level directly impacts their bottom line. It’s not surprising that in this environment, hospitals pick downstream partners in-home health agencies that can work with them and help reduce readmissions.

So as hospitals get increasingly picky when it comes to their post-acute network providers, how does a home health agency thrive in this competitive market?

Community Nursing Services thrive in this environment

Kimberly Dansie is Vice President of Business Development for CNS, a Utah-based home health, hospice, and palliative care agency serving surrounding states since 1928. Having been in the home health, hospice, and palliative space for so long, with a patient-centric approach to care, CNS has adapted quickly to the transition to value-based care. And with the help of Cortex, CNS managed to thrive by using CheckUp™ Calls to stay on top of patient care, and Hospital Alerts to proactively help hospital partners avoid costly readmissions.

According to Kimberly, “it really helps patients if they can communicate if they are having any issues. And we like that they’re able to speak to a Cortex nurse and share if they’re having issues like feeling nauseous or falling a lot. And then we get [alerts] so that we can send staff out to meet with them, and reassure them if they need more care.” This proactive approach identifies patients at high risk for readmission and allows CNS to address their care before further need of readmission.

With the data-driven platform from Cortex, CNS was able to show actual data to their hospital partner the result of this proactive approach to post-acute care. It makes the choice for local Utah hospitals to work with CNS a simple one. As Kimberly states, “they want to partner with people who help them, and by having the information in Cortex we’re able to help make the argument that we’re a good partner.”

See more of Kimberly's interview here:

Cortex Solutions

By using Cortex’s Check-up™ calls, CNS was able to stay on top of patient care results and impress upon hospital partners to select them as a referral partner for post-acute discharge.

Check-Up Calls™ provide a way to monitor and intervene when patients struggle. In addition, follow-up calls evaluate patient satisfaction as well as specific scores via scripted calls made by our Registered Nurses. Powerful dashboards from Cortex provide real-time data and actionable opportunities.

With Check-up calls, “[it] allows us to do service recovery, we’ll know if that patient is unhappy with the people that are caring for them, or some type of issue that might have come up in the home. And we can intervene and support them and make it right, so they’re happier with their service,” says Kimberly.

Hospital Alerts notifies you the moment Cortex identifies a patient is at high risk for readmission or has been readmitted to the hospital. Through the use of the state’s Health Information Exchange (HIE) systems, Cortex integrates data from hospitals and post-acute providers across the continuum. 

By using Hospital Alerts, Kimberly says CNS “get notified if a patient presents in an ER room or in a hospital, and then we can work on that, work with that patient to try avoid admission to the hospital if they’re in the ER, or to be able to communicate to the hospital if there was an admission. It’s a very helpful tool for us and we felt that it’s helped us decrease our readmission rate.”

"All of us in healthcare want to do the right thing for the patient. And the more we can share information and share data, the more we can put systems in place that make things better for patients. Which only helps all of us because we’ll all be a patient at some point."

–Kimberly Dansie, VP of Business Development
Community Nursing Services