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Integrated delivery networks (IDN) offer an advantageous healthcare solution for providers and patients. Often, IDNs encompass facilities and services across the healthcare continuum. Hospitals, outpatient clinics, ambulatory surgery centers, urgent care, pharmacies, and other services can operate under a single umbrella to deliver care to a community.
Outcomes improve when a single entity is responsible for the entire patient experience. Patients benefit from unified record-keeping, simplified billing, better incentive alignment, and reduced costs. For health systems, providers, and policymakers, IDNs are an attractive answer to the fragmented, inefficient, and resource-hungry approach to healthcare that has defined the past several decades of care delivery.
In general, IDNs share a few broad objectives: to provide better care and better outcomes, reduce the cost of delivering care, boost revenue, and improve the patient experience. Health systems integration can help organizations take steps toward achieving these goals. However, it’s important to note that even the most mature integrated delivery systems can still suffer from inefficiencies that prevent them from achieving their optimum performance. Overcoming these inefficiencies is a crucial area of focus in healthcare delivery and management.
The underlying causes of inefficiency vary. Outdated or incompatible data management systems create unnecessary friction, and conflicting protocols lead to confusion. Manual, repetitive tasks keep providers from giving patients their full attention. The result is a suboptimal patient experience and decreased provider satisfaction.
Fortunately, standardizing care across the IDN addresses many of these challenges simultaneously. Implementing standardization unifies the patient experience, creates a seamless workflow across the healthcare continuum, and removes excess cognitive burden from providers. This yields better outcomes while increasing provider satisfaction and reducing waste and redundancy.
Capsa Healthcare offers a wide range of highly configurable end-to-end solutions to help IDNs achieve standardization of care across clinical facilities at every stage of the patient journey.
It’s important to clarify that standardized care doesn’t mean cookie-cutter care. Capsa designs solutions in collaboration with health systems to offer a unified experience with the flexibility providers need to deliver appropriate care that matches patient needs.
Standardization with Capsa facilitates better care not because it enforces a rigid approach to care but because it provides a uniform and predictable framework for care. This removes friction from the patient and the provider experience and allows providers to focus on treating the patient rather than managing cumbersome workflows and technology.
The bedside is where the rubber meets the road for patient experience. Capsa’s point-of-care solutions are designed to create an environment where caregiving is the primary focus.
Our full-featured technology carts combine documentation, supply management, and medication administration into an ergonomic, provider-friendly package. By integrating hardware and software, Capsa’s point-of-care offerings combine custom workflows, automation, and remote management features to create a unified experience that follows the patient through treatment.
Let’s take a look at a simple example.
A patient checks into the hospital for a surgical procedure that requires a brief recovery and observation period. At registration, the patient’s details are confirmed, and the case is documented in their EHR. The record is updated by the medical staff during the procedure, and follow-up protocols and medications are ordered.
Using a telemedicine technology cart, the on-site surgical team is able to consult with specialists at another location as they complete the procedure.
In the recovery room, a nurse tracks the patient’s recovery process using a mobile cart equipped with a medication management unit. Any prescribed medication is dispensed and tracked using automation, preventing diversion and medication errors. Proper dosage and administration time are controlled by the documentation.
As the patient continues through recovery and any necessary observation period, documentation is updated in real time, and adjustments to the treatment plan are made. The remote medical team consulting on the case is able to perform follow-up monitoring via a bedside telehealth cart.
When it comes time for discharge, the patient can visit the onsite pharmacy to fill prescriptions for symptom or pain management. For long-term medication, the patient follows up with an in-network pharmacy, where similar automation technology streamlines the script fill and ensures an error-free treatment experience.
Capsa’s solutions span the IDN care continuum. Point-of-care solutions include bedside computing workstations, mobile workstations, telehealth carts, supply carts, medication management units, clinical device carts, and crash carts.
Our supply and medication storage and management solutions are designed to unify care across sites and facilities. Automation and advanced software help keep inventory in sync across locations, and EHR documentation carts ensure patient information is up to date at every stage of the patient journey. Finally, our pharmacy automation solutions seamlessly integrate with other Capsa products to ensure patients receive the medications they need as they continue their treatment plan at home.
The consensus among experts is that standardization improves the quality of patient care. When IDNs can overcome fragmentation, data silos, and friction-filled procedures across multi-site health systems, outcomes improve. Standardization also makes the provider experience more pleasant, reduces the probability of errors, and facilitates better patient communication and interaction. In addition to producing better patient outcomes, standardization reduces waste, conquers inefficiency, and enhances revenue growth.
In short, standardization may be the single best investment IDN leaders can make in the future of their health system. If you’re ready to explore how Capsa’s solutions can help your IDN standardize for better outcomes, get in touch with one of our solution design consultants today.