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Rachel Dory

Oct 27
5

Delta Health Technologies Receives Post-Acute LINK Elite Supplier Award

By | Press

2016PostAcuteLINKEliteSealALTOONA, PA  –  Delta Health Technologies® is proud to announce that it has earned an ‘Elite Supplier’ distinction for 2016 Post-Acute LINK Conference. This award is given to the companies that ranked in the top 10% of suppliers based on provider scores for their ability to be consultative, innovative, and the overall value of each supplier meeting.

“This seal identifies Delta Health Technologies as a progressive thought leader in the post-acute arena, and as an organization that understands how to build partnerships with clients,” said Meredith Anastasio, Post-Acute LINK Managing Director.

Post-Acute LINK brings together providers and vendors from across the continuum to conduct meetings, share industry knowledge and experiences and fulfill sourcing needs. LINK suppliers represent more than 40 product/service categories, with participation from innovative industry leaders and emerging companies.

Registration Now Open

Post-Acute LINK is exclusively for provider organizations in the Home Care, Hospice, Long Term Care, Transitional Care and Senior Living space with revenue over $20M and the supplier/vendor organizations that work with them.

Space is limited to 80 provider companies and spots are swiftly being filled. For registration information, please visit www.postacutelink.com or contact Miriam Adams at (203) 644-1734.

About Lincoln Healthcare Group

Lincoln Healthcare Leadership is an education and relationship networking company serving top-tier executives in four healthcare provider sectors.

Our mission is to advance and inspire excellence in leadership, strategy, innovation and best practices across leading healthcare providers, and to be a catalyst for change as providers move from a fee for service reimbursement system to a value-based system.

Our core product is conferences. Lincoln conferences are known for their outstanding quality: visionary educational programs, exceptional peer networking, authentic customer service and memorable experiences.

Sep 02
5

Academy Helps Private Duty Customers with Training and Support

By | Press

ALTOONA, PA  –  Delta Health Technologies® is excited to announce AppointMate Academy – a blog specifically for its AppointMate customers.

AppointMate Academy will specifically assist users of the AppointMate application with a single place to review insightful tips, useful product options, learn about the newest features, and read about forthcoming product enhancements.  AppointMate Academy is also designed to ensure users get the most productivity and efficiency out of their agency.

“Delta continues its long-standing commitment to ensuring our 5,000+ customers – providing personal care services using AppointMate – have the best productivity tools at their disposal.” said Keith Crownover, President & CEO of Delta Health Technologies.  “In today’s busy world, our AppointMate users are looking for a quick, easy way to find information to ensure their operations are working at maximum efficiency. We know the AppointMate Academy will do just that.”

Jun 26
5

Clinicians Two Times More Effective Using Patient-Centric EHR Solution

By | Press

ALTOONA, PA  –  Delta Health Technologies® continues their excellence in clinical documentation optimization.  Home health and hospice clinicians using Delta’s clinical solutions complete their documentation in the patient’s home two times more than the industry average. By facilitating in-home documentation completion, clinicians optimize coordinated care, reduce the number of documentation errors, and improve their satisfaction.

“Delta originated patient-centered SaaS applications that seamlessly integrate real-time patient information across the agency from a single electronic record for each patient,” said Keith Crownover, President & CEO of Delta Health Technologies. “Our solutions ensure the proper documentation processes will be followed and any effort to the contrary will be hard to accomplish. By making the proper processes easier to accomplish, providers will dramatically improve patient care, outcomes, and satisfaction (employee and patient) – leading to faster claims submission and revenue.”

Delta’s Crescendo™ solution starts by leveraging a single electronic patient record that is seamlessly integrated across the agency and accessible by all departments. This provides real-time access to patient data across all service lines, payers, and agency operations – ensuring consistency in documentation, compliance, and coordination of care. By empowering the clinical and care efforts of an agency, our patient-centered solutions help improve outcomes, increase patient and employee satisfaction, increase operational efficiency, facilitate billing, build referrals and strengthen revenue.  Our Crescendo SaaS application may be customized via role-based controls and customizable workflows to optimize the unique processes that are most successful for an agency’s teams.

Feb 09
6

A Guide to the Growing Long Term Post-Acute Care (LTPAC) Market

By | Press

ALTOONA, PA  – Delta Health Technologies®, the post-acute care industry’s most experienced vendor focused on clinical point-of-care, billing and home health operations solutions, released a ‘A Guide to the Growing LTPAC Market’ infographic today.

Home health is poised to be the care setting of choice as it’s more affordable and delivers more positive patient outcomes. Care-at-home providers need to capture this healthcare sector growth with business service line expansion, connection with other healthcare providers, while proving the value they bring to the population.

“We think this concise and informative infographic is a helpful tool to allow care-at-home providers to visualize how they can grow their business and have the quantitative data needed to change their business model to be more successful.” stated Keith Crownover, President and CEO of Delta Health Technologies. “We recognize that patients want to remain in the comfort of their own home with familiar surroundings. We also know that receiving care in their home leads to better outcomes.”

According to the Pew Research Center, around 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day and by 2030, 18% of the nation will have reached at least that age. This report estimates that by 2050, 27 million people will need some form of paid care service, doubling from 13 million in 2000.

LTPAC services cover a wide range of conditions and more complex, chronic care needs that result in frequent transitions for patients between their homes as well as acute, post-acute and long-term care settings. The range of LTPAC providers and care settings with frequent movement of patients amongst them necessitates the exchange of relevant and accurate care documentation. Coordination of care is essential as is the need for systems to support the capturing, use and exchange of patient information.

To create the infographic, Delta Health Technologies collected industry data including statistics from the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, Triple Tree Report and the National State of the Industry Report for Home Health and Hospice.

Jan 08
5

What are new leadership characteristics needed for a transforming healthcare delivery system?

By | News

The healthcare delivery system is transforming from an institutional acute care based model to a community post acute, and even pre-acute, population health based model. But the transformation is more complex than that. When there are value shifts in any economic sector, certain assumptions can be made and applied to healthcare.

  • When risk shifts from the payer to the provider, a cycle begins that shifts power from the provider to the customer.
  • With such a shift, the Value Chain is reengineered, accompanied by mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, closures, and rising customer expectations of service.
  • As this occurs, standardizing clinical processes necessitates the responsibility for health care to be downloaded: doctors to nurses, nurses to technicians, technicians to paraprofessionals, etc.
  • New Information Technology continues to generate rapidly expanding quantities of data which, coupled with advancements in data analysis, allow for identification of patterns of disease, gauging efficacy of treatments, and spotting links between causes and symptoms.(BIG DATA)
  • Advances in Technology represent the “breakthroughs” in cost and quality which occur when the value-added chain is restructured, leading to innovative, elegant changes which create a new paradigm where existing methodologies become superfluous.

So, how to lead through the economic deregulation of healthcare? What leader characteristics are required to “pull it off”?

Economics 101: those who benefited most from the old order are the slowest to adapt. The leader of tomorrow must:

  • Have Vision; be able to paint the picture of the new hardscape of healthcare for the organization while dealing with the realities of today – the proverbial one foot in the present and one foot in the future.
  • Be a Paradigm Buster; don’t wait for a shift to react. Stay ahead. As hockey great Wayne Gretsky said, “Skate to where the puck will be”.
  • Be Customer Focused and Patient Centered; it is more important to own the customer than the product.
  • Now, More Than Ever, Maintain Focus on Reducing Costs while Increasing Quality Outcomes.
  • Create the Leverage to Forge Strong Partnerships for Fitting into a Chain of Value and a Distribution System.
  • Be Data Driven and Invested in Technology; watch where value is shifting and shift with it.
  • Have Faith in the Future and be Willing to Challenge the Status Quo.

How should providers prepare for 2015?

Organizations should prepare for 2015 by retooling themselves into a partner whose performance characteristics make it sought after by Bundled Payment projects, Accountable Care Organizations, Transitional Care Models for Value Based Purchasing and Chronic Disease Care Management, etc. That means developing and delivering the care programs of the future today. This translates into the following mandates:

  • Demonstrate Outcomes via transparent data specific to the potential partnership
  • Develop a Utilization Review Approach to Care Modeling for Home Care – Proportional and Acuity Safety Based
  • Employ Data Integration and collaboration across the partnership
  • Ensure Dynamic Patient Risk Stratification with associated algorithms for care management
  • Shift Care Focus from Patient Dependence to Self Management
  • Emphasize Population Health Management – Chronic Disease Transitional Care

The Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, certainly applies to health care today. These are the most interesting and exciting of times. A new generation of health care professionals and leaders have been handed the challenge of a lifetime. They just might pull it off!

Nov 12
6

SHP and Delta Health Technologies® Release Next Generation Data Interface and Bring Enhanced Efficiency to Mutual Clients

By | Press

SANTA BARBARA, CA – November 12, 2014 – Strategic Healthcare Programs (SHP), the leading data analytics and benchmarking company for home health and hospice, announces the addition of “integrated alerting” within Delta Health Technologies’ Crescendo™ EMR platform.

Home health agencies using the Delta Crescendo software now benefit from a new type of SHP interface where both the transmission of data and retrieval of SHP’s real-time alerts and reports takes place directly within the Crescendo application, including at the point-of-care.

A host of real-time alerts ranging from documentation coding (OASIS scrubbing) to identification of patients at risk for hospitalization or falls are displayed to all authorized staff within the Crescendo application, bringing additional workflow efficiency at a time when streamlined processes are essential.

Other SHP reports available through the interface include detailed clinical and financial analysis, hospitalization and readmission data, and staff scorecards.  Patient satisfaction scores from CMS’ HHCAHPS survey are provided directly within these SHP reports, providing a full picture of all aspects of quality care. This functionality allows managers to be proactive in addressing issues before they become problems, an essential strategy in the value-based payment environment.

“Technology leaders recognize the value this sort of streamlined interface brings to their clients, and so it’s no surprise that Delta partnered with SHP to help their clients achieve greater efficiency and better outcomes. The timing couldn’t be better as the new OASIS-C1 standard assessment and ICD-10 draw near,” said Barbara Rosenblum, Founder and CEO of SHP.

“Delta is extremely pleased to bring this additional SHP integration to our Crescendo customers,” said Keith Crownover, President and CEO of Delta Health Technologies. “The best way for us to continue to provide outstanding service to our customers is to be responsive to their needs. Many of our customers use SHP for their data analysis and we are pleased this enhanced integration will enable them to continue to increase efficiencies while still providing excellent patient care.”

With SHP, clients have access to a comprehensive suite of online, real-time interactive analytic tools and benchmarks that improve documentation accuracy and payment, predict at-risk situations, highlight problematic staff, and improve outcomes, and keep patients from readmitting to the hospital.

Delta’s Crescendo software is an integrated solution for home health, hospice, and private duty and provides end-to-end coverage for all care-at-home business needs. From clinical point-of-care to resource management, billing and regulatory compliance; Crescendo provides accurate and real-time visibility into what it takes to run a care-at-home business more profitably.

Learn more about SHP’s data analytics and benchmarking dashboards.

Apr 08
5

2013 National State of the Industry Study – Phase Two Registration Opens

By | News

As interviews of industry leaders continue, NAHC urges its members who have yet done so to sign-up. Please register and take part in this important national study. The State of the Industry Study will address current practices and future strategies in the areas of IS/EHR, telehealth, new health care models and operations.

The interview will last less than twenty minutes. Participating agencies will be among the first to receive in-depth reports plus strategic recommendations from the findings. The results will also include insights into what practices the top agency, those with the best financial and quality outcomes, are using and planning.

Researchers at Fazzi Associates, the firm responsible for managing the study and reports, estimate that 1,000 industry leaders will be interviewed. If you did not register during the pre-study period, you have an opportunity to do so now.

The Study is sponsored by NAHC, CHAP, The Joint Commission, the Forum of State Associations, Delta Health Technologies, HealthWyse and Fazzi Associates. Results are expected to be released in late May or early June of this year. A major presentation on findings will be presented at NAHC’s Annual Meeting & Exposition, October 31 – November 3, 2013 in Washington, DC.

To participate in the study interviews, your agency must meet the following three criteria:
• Medicare certified
• Medicare revenues of $500,000 or higher
• Home Health Compare scores for two or more reporting periods

Feb 06
5

Delta Health Technologies to Sponsor Another Fazzi Study: “The 2013 National State of the Industry Study”

By | News

In back to back news releases last week, Delta Health Technologies LLC introduced its new VP of sales, announced that it will underwrite the “2013 National State of the Industry Study,” and proposed a new name for the industry it has served for nearly 45 years, the care-at-home industry.

“In an effort to help the care-at-home industry both manage and provide quality outcome-driven care in the new reform environment,” Delta’s first release explains, the Altoona, PA-based software firm launched on January 28 a national study “designed to provide agency leaders with critical insights and best practice information in the areas of IT/EHR, telehealth and operational practices.”

Co-sponsored by the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, the Forum of State Associations, and national best-practice research firm Fazzi Associates, who will design and facilitate the national effort, the research has been designed to uncover and spotlight the strengths of the nation’s leading homecare agencies. Delta added that it anticipates additional participants will support the study.

“Patient treatment does not always end with a hospital discharge, as the choice has traditionally been a rehab or skilled nursing facility,” said Delta President and CEO Keith Crownover. “Today, thanks to a growing shift toward home- and community-based services, along with population health management and fiscal awareness, increasing numbers are being referred to home health agencies, which was a major impetus for this study.”

Methodology will include three phases. Phase I included a web-based input survey allowing anyone in the field to suggest issues and questions they would like to see addressed in the study. Phase II, scheduled for February and March, will involve in-depth phone interviews with nearly 1,000 agency leaders. The final phase will include distribution of free national reports and webinars, and a presentation on the findings during the NAHC Annual Meeting in Washington, DC next October.

“Healthcare reform has elevated the importance of caring for patients outside the acute care environment,” said Crownover. “Combine that with the possibilities of telehealth, the impending EHR deadline, and the advent of ACOs and other delivery networks. By uncovering ‘what’s working’ with the top ten percent, we will be able to develop guidelines that will help the entire industry maintain positive outcomes, high quality scores and fiscal responsibility.”

Previous studies sponsored by Delta and conducted by Fazzi Associates includes the OASIS-C Best Practice Study, the National Excellence in Therapy Project and the Delta Study to Reduce Hospitalizations.

New Sales VP arrives with 15 years experience
Delta also announced the hiring of Monte Ruder as Vice President of Sales. Formerly with iPractice Group, Ruder will be responsible for expanding, managing and training Delta’s sales organization and continuing to drive growth in the home health, hospice and private duty sectors.

Ruder has a microbiology degree from the University of Dayton and 15 years of experience in health information technology, specifically in leading sales teams and developing strategic partnerships. Prior to iPractice group, he also held sales executive and management positions with Allscripts, Dialog Medical and NextGen Healthcare Systems.

“The healthcare industry and health IT worlds are changing,” CEO Crownover said.” Today’s sales force must understand not only the business needs of care-at-home organizations but also the unique challenges and innovative advancements that are part of today’s healthcare reform environment. We believe that Monte will be able to equip and inspire our team so that our customers will have the knowledge and tools necessary to deliver efficient, cost-effective patient care.”

This article originally appeared in Tim Rowan’s Home Care Technology Report, February 6, 2013. homecaretechreport.com Reprinted by permission. Further reproduction by permission of the publisher only. Write to Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc. at editor@homecaretechreport.com.