The advent of pay-for-performance initiatives and cuts in federal reimbursements for preventable medical emergencies are prompting hospitals to take a closer look at the post-discharge process. With studies indicating billions of dollars lost each year when patients return to a hospital for treatment, officials are looking for ways to reduce those readmissions.
That’s where the Curaspan Health Group comes in.
The 10-year-old company, based in Newton, Mass., is touting the Curaspan Clinical Intelligence Data Bank, which develops a Web-based “patient-transition network” designed to move the patient from the hospital through discharge to appropriate post-discharge care. Hospital officials use the data bank and the eDischarge software-as-a-service application to track readmissions by post-acute provider, diagnosis and physician, identifying problem areas and helping them create protocols to prevent readmissions.
“We started with discharge planning technology,” said Tom Ferry, the company’s president and CEO, who launched Curaspan after his wife’s grandmother encountered problems with post-acute care for a broken hip. He said the company has morphed into transitions management, helping hospitals to reduce patient length-of-stay by improving patient throughput, reduce readmissions, monitor patient leakage and improve staff efficiency.
According to a 2009 study conducted by Curaspan of 130 hospitals, most with more than 150 beds, those who regularly study readmissions data reduced their preventable readmission rates by an average of .5 percent – amounting to about 15 fewer readmissions per month and an annual savings of $1.3 million per hospital.
“Regularly receiving, reviewing and responding to data pays off,” said Carol Everhart, Curaspan’s director of clinical informatics. “Our trending data shows that after about six months of data usage, hospitals start cutting their readmission rates. They discover a trend, identify the root cause or causes behind it and then implement a plan to address it that improves patient care.”
“Institutionalize more data discipline, and the lower costs and improved care from fewer readmissions nationwide could translate into more than $7.3 billion in savings,” she said. “Even if just half of the other hospitals in the U.S. adopted the same approach, a few billion dollars could be cut from healthcare costs and hundreds of thousands of patients saved from a return trip to the hospital.”
Among Curaspan’s clients is the Franklin Square Hospital Center in Baltimore. Officials there have used the company’s software to track readmissions by facility for congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and create protocols for reducing return visits.
The Curaspan Clinical Data Bank “is the only source that tells me which facilities or home health services are generating the most readmissions,” said Jan Lear, Franklin’s director of case management.
According to Ferry, Curaspan offers an “agnostic software application” that can attach to a hospital’s existing electronic medical record system, providing an audit trail to help officials manage the discharge process. With eDischarge, he said, they can create a discharge checklist or scorecard, communicate with payers and work with staff to promote best practices.
“Our plan in the future is to leverage that communications platform to make (the discharge and post-acute care process) more seamless,” he said.