Patients’ needs are evolving, and primary care providers must be ready to meet the needs of these patients in new settings beyond the traditional medical clinic or practice setting. Home health care, and other at-home care options, are one of the fastest growing aspects of medicine today.
In the U.S. there are more than two million patients who have trouble getting to the doctor’s office for regular patient care. A significant number of patients are homebound or cannot come for in-person care for reasons that include:
Only a small percentage of these patients have access to home-based primary care. But as the number of elderly patients increases, providers must be able to find ways to get the care to these patients. That is especially true as medical advances help patients live longer than ever before, even with chronic health conditions.
Today there are more than 55 million seniors over 65 in the U.S.—that’s more than 16% of the population, or about one out of every seven Americans. That number is projected to grow significantly, reaching more than 20% of the population by 2030. In an AARP study, 90 percent of seniors said they prefer to stay in their homes as long as possible and continue receiving care. Living at home improves patients’ feelings of security and comfort. But staying at home is increasingly difficult if they cannot get the medical care they need because of mobility, transportation, or cognitive limitations.
The right home care software from AdvancedMD can help primary care physicians meet these patients’ needs, no matter where they are getting care.
AdvancedMD offers the best practice management software and EHR software for home health care. Our cloud-based software offers the highest level of security and data protection from the world’s most secure hosting platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS). The platform protects your practice and patient information while facilitating more options for care outside the traditional clinical setting.
Our EHR/EMR for home health care offers the same intuitive platform, and all the tools you expect from AdvancedMD to connect with your patients and provide ongoing care.
Home health care visits are not the same as in-person appointments at your clinic. Care providers who engage in these appointments have specific charting needs to capture all the necessary information for appropriate billing of at-home services. Medicare and many commercial payers now recognize the value of home health care, which means providers can bill for more of these services. However, reimbursement depends on proper charting and documentation that meets narrowly defined parameters.
Many people think of home health care specifically as care provided by someone who goes to a patient’s home. It can also include opportunities for patient outreach using telemedicine, as long as telemedicine visits do not replace necessary in-person home care visits. Telemedicine outreach has expanded dramatically in recent years. It offers several benefits to both patients and providers by:
AdvancedMD offers an intuitive and simple telemedicine platform that makes it easy for providers to stay in touch with patients between in-person appointments.
Our at-home health care software also helps providers and patients seamlessly integrate remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices. These devices are an important part of at-home care for many patients. They are especially critical for patients managing chronic health conditions. Information from RPM devices helps providers better understand what’s happening with patients between their regularly scheduled appointments and follow-ups.
AdvancedMD offers the best home health care EHR for scheduling at your clinic. You get an integrated scheduling module that helps you find upcoming appointment slots when providers are available for at-home care. You can search multiple providers from different office locations, and identify when they can get to specific areas to provide home health care.
You can also schedule multiple recurring appointments with a single entry, then edit each individual appointment if necessary. AdvancedMD makes it easy to incorporate home health care scheduling with your regular clinical scheduling to ensure there are no conflicts for providers going out to conduct home care visits.
Our integrated medical billing and coding software solutions help your practice capture all the information you need from each home care visit. We help you accurately bill for services and get the highest possible reimbursement. Our home health billing solutions are integrated completely with the AdvancedMD EHR and practice management software, so your team won’t have to manually transfer information between systems. This eliminates errors and helps streamline the process for billing all your at-home care.
Home health care is only growing in importance every year to provide necessary care to people who cannot make it to a clinic in person. Be prepared for the increase in home health care visits with the right software from AdvancedMD. Schedule a demo to learn more.