Universally Connected
Care Teams

To provide long-term care, I need to know when my patients are admitted or discharged from a hospital.

While post-acute patients often have to see numerous providers across different ambulatory settings, aligning all the pieces across this scattered care continuum frequently suffers from lack of proper workflows or tools. We strongly believe that filling this communication gap is integral to the mission of improved patient outcomes.

To support efforts to drive compliance and secure information sharing, our team of experts identified six impactful use cases that improve communication and collaboration among care teams and between providers and patients:

• Hospital to Ambulatory Teams – align acute and ambulatory teams on mutual patients
• Care Team Communications – recommend medications, ask clarifying questions, or share patient updates with internal staff, PCPs, and caregivers
• Field Based Communications – stay connected with home health providers
• Internal Staff Communication – connect with staff members on incoming or discharged patients, as well as upcoming events or staffing changes
• Patient Outreach – keep patients engaged and stay abreast of any changes in condition through direct communication
• Connect with Family Caregivers – offer guidance and share educational materials to support a patient’s care plan

When every second is critical, we must be able to securely communicate with the ED to prepare them for emergency patient arrival.

Collaboration between EMS and ED is critical because every second counts. Yet, crucial patient information is often not communicated because EMS updates are typically given over radio calls or other unsecure channels.

Backline^® provides a HIPAA-compliant way for EMTs and EDs to share information while patients are en route.

Hospitals benefit because Backline allows them to:

• Receive secure messages with actionable data prior to patients’ arrival
• Get up-to-date medication lists and on-scene photos to speed diagnosis
• Create a patient chart in advance to expedite orders
• Increase ED throughput
• Reduce reportable door-to-treatment times

By enabling care collaboration between first responders and hospitals, Backline helps eliminate delays and expedite care.

I need a faster, easier way see if cheaper therapeutic options are available for my customers.

Delays in care, for any reason, can be harmful to your patient’s health and to your pharmacy’s bottom line. According to the NCPA, independent community pharmacists consult with physicians an average of 9.7 times per day on prescription drug therapy.

It’s easy to see why patients can get frustrated with a process they may not fully understand and find another pharmacy, or worse, abandon their prescription.

DrFirst’s Backline^® care collaboration solution helps pharmacists communicate with any member of the care team with the immediacy of HIPAA-compliant texting to remove barriers to treatment.

I have to make my pharmacy operations more efficient to bring more value to my patients.

As a pharmacist, whether you work in a retail pharmacy, specialty pharmacy, or an independent, community pharmacy, your role is changing rapdly. You need to operate at the top of your license, providing more clinically relevant counseling and activities.

But that means you need to make sure your pharmacy is performing at top efficiency. Right now, studies show that pharmacists spend as much as 40% of their time on tasks that don’t add value to your patients, things like following up on the status of prior authorizations, calling doctors, even hand-writing medication labels 15% of the time, and interacting with your EMR 22% of the time.

DrFirst offers tools that can help you perform at peak efficiency. For instance, Backline, can help you connect with payers, doctors, and patients at any time. You can check on the status of a PA, send information timelier that a payer may need to complete a PA, and confirm prescription information. And you can let patients know the status of their prescription as well as when it will be ready to pick up based on the PA approval/denial to keep satisfaction and medication adherence high.

To support our clients, particularly now, we need to offer secure, integrated collaboration tools—especially telehealth—that connect providers, care teams, and patients.

In light of the rapid spread of the coronavirus, healthcare and government leaders have endorsed the use of telehealth technologies to help prevent the spread of the virus through remote patient assessments. Congress is backing this effort by committing funding to encourage healthcare providers to adopt telehealth solutions, and payers have relaxed some requirements.

Virtual visits allow clinicians to screen patients who may be infected, without the risk of exposing patients and providers to the virus in their facilities. Telehealth is a powerful tool in the fight against coronavirus and DrFirst is here to help.

In addition, roughly 250,000 people die every year from preventable medical errors, the majority of which are caused by breakdowns in communication. Many organizations still rely on verbal updates, paper forms, unsecure messaging, and siloed systems, all of which contribute to poor clinical communications. This not only puts your client organizations at risk of failing to deliver the high-quality care their patients deserve, but also increases the risk of medical errors, costly delays, and PHI exposure.

In order to be reimbursed and qualify for new payment models, the healthcare system and its entities need to restructure to meet new requirements.

Healthcare is changing from episodic treatment to longitudinal along the patient continuum of care, shifting from physician-centric to patient-centric. Historically, healthcare had silos, which created gaps in communication and care. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recognized the need to fill the gaps and changed the healthcare delivery system, making everyone responsible by establishing a patient-centered approach framework.

Healthcare is a Team Effort

It requires close collaboration between providers in multiple care settings, the patient, their family members or care takers, and others in the care ecosystem. Unfortunately, for many organizations, outdated methods of communication are a barrier in achieving effective care coordination. In order to deliver quality care outcomes, physicians and nurses must be able to quickly share clinical data, images, documents, and updates related to their patients.

Help Your Clients Protect Their Bottom Line and Deliver Better Care

Backline^® secure messaging for healthcare industries meets all HIPAA, HITECH, and Joint Commission requirements. It connects providers in real-time, securely, from any location, to support care in progress and transitions of care. And only Backline features Patient-Centered ChatSM, triggered automatically by your clients, enabling patient care team members to collaborate instantly and share data, images, and other information specific to a single patient.

Backlines supports:

• Telehealth – critical during this health crisis, screen patients who may be infected, without the risk of exposing patients and providers to the virus in their facilities, receive reimbursement for telehealth services provided, improve patient engagement, satisfaction, and keep patients and staff healthy
• All care settings – including ambulatory practices, ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), acute care, emergency department and emergency medical services (EMS), and urgent care
• All medical specialties – including pediatrics, geriatrics, internal medicine, oncology, nephrology, dialysis, orthopedics, ophthalmology, gastroenterology, behavioral health and substance abuse, long-term care, home health, hospice, and more
• HIPAA-compliant secure communications – convenient and confident collaboration between internal and external care teams, and patients
• Care Transitions – instantly share CCD documents, forms, and images with stakeholders, as well as education materials with patients
• E-signature Capabilities – quickly gather and share required signatures

I want to prevent avoidable readmissions and allow patients to stay connected with their doctors and families. 

Now, more than ever, skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) require advanced communication tools to keep providers, patients, families, and caregivers connected.

Backline^® bundles telehealth, secure messaging, file sharing, e-forms integration, automated alerts, and more in one unified HIPAA-compliant app.

With Backline, you’ll have all the capabilities you need to improve care coordination and enable virtual care:

• Streamline referrals and transfers – Share documents electronically between facilities vs. faxing or physically delivering them with patients, which can result in lost records and delays
• Collaborate with remote clinicians – Securely share information and files via text or perform video consults through telehealth
• Enable virtual checkups with PCPs and specialists – Enhance treatment by connecting patients with external providers through HD video chat
• Improve staff communication and collaboration – Align the care team through a centralized communication platform and prevent communication breaks during hand-offs
• Allow for HIPAA-compliant video visits between patients, providers, and families– Group video in Backline enables patients, family members, caregivers, and the care team to discuss care plans.  Plus, Backline provides a convenient way for patients to connect with loved ones, without the need for the virtual visitor to download an app or sign-up for a service.

Backline unlocks new possibilities for improving care, quality, and financial outcomes:

• Lower readmissions – Use automated alerts for enhanced monitoring and telehealth for improved speed-to-care, which can prevent avoidable readmissions
• Improve the patient experience – Use video visits to allow patients to stay connected to doctors and loved ones. Increase patient/family satisfaction and boost quality scores.
• Streamline operations – Do more with less while increasing quality measures by eliminating communication gaps, errors, and delays
• Accelerate MDS documentation and reimbursement – Collect information from clinicians faster to expedite billing processes
• Support value-based care – Share diagnoses and status changes with partner providers in real-time to improve the quality of care and the revenue cycle

Boost Your Care Coordination