PointClickCare: The Essential 10-Step Framework for Modern Long-Term Care Success
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Digital Imperative in Senior Care
Considered by Many as Just Software, What is PointClickCare?
The 10-Step Framework for Maximizing Your Platform
Foundational Step 1: Unified Clinical and Financial Data
Step 2: Efficiency Streamlining Documentation & Care Plans
Step 3: Coordination Integrating Communication with Multiple Care Disciplines
Step 4: Insight Gaining Value with Real-Time Analytics and Reports
Step 5: Compliance and the Easing of Mandatory Regulations
Step 6: A Connected Care Ecosystem
Step 7: The Engagement of Residents and Their Families
Step 8: Mobility, Which is Staff Empowered with Access from Anywhere
Step 9: Financial Health, Which Comes from Improving the Management of the Revenue Cycle
Step 10: Evolution and the Dedication to Ongoing Change
Real-World Impact Case Studies
Navigating Common Challenges and Considerations
The Future of Care with Point Click Care
Conclusion: Building a Sustainable, High-Quality Future
Introduction: The Digital Imperative in Senior Care
The post-acute and long-term care landscape is as complex as it has ever been. Along with the need for compassion, providers are being asked to do more with less and at the highest standards due to tightening regulations, staffing challenges, rising acuity of residents, and financial pressures.
Considering the pressures of the current economy, the new reality is that investing in technology is now mandatory, not optional. This is where the PointClickCare platform becomes relevant. It has grown from its first electronic health record (EHR) application to a more comprehensive solution that is now a fully integrated system that assists in addressing the diverse needs of modern senior care. This is not a high-level discussion, but rather a practical 10-step approach to using technology to attain operational, clinical, and financial optimization, which will be the focus of this article.
What is PointClickCare? More Than Software.
This description makes it sound like PointClickCare is just another piece of software. To compare a modern hospital to just a building is a gross understatement, and the same is true for PointClickCare. It is one of the more significant technology platforms in the industry. PointClickCare is a cloud-based clinical and financial management platform designed specifically to meet the requirements of long-term care (LTC), skilled nursing facilities (SNF), senior living centres, and home health care. It has the potential to shatter the silos of clinical care, business, and financial management.
Consider it like the central nervous system of the organization. Every operation, from charting, administering medications, billing, and communication with families, is routed through this one system. Because of this single source, we are able to integrate disparate data sources and provide actionable insights to the organization so leaders can optimize decision-making that balances resident outcomes and organizational profitability. Achieving a PointClickCare system is not about installing a program, but it is about the entire operational model strategically aligning to a new way of managing the organization.
The 10-Step Framework for Maximizing Your Platform
Like any major investment, success with this system is not by chance. To help you effectively support an investment of this scale, we provide this 10-step framework to achieve success with PointClickCare.
Step 1: Foundation – Unified Clinical and Financial Data
The first and most important step is to achieve a single and reliable source of truth. Having a fragmented system where MDS coordinators, a nurse, and a billing department are each using disparate tools is the recipe for errors, delay, and revenue loss. PointClickCare’s architecture is designed to eliminate this. A nurse, after documenting a wound change on the clinical module, will have that information available to inform care planning and billing on the automated generation of regulatory reports. This foundational unity is the bedrock upon which other benefits are built.
Step 2: Efficiency – Automating Documentation and Care Plans
Manually filling out documentation and care plans leads to frustration and wastes nursing time. There are also serious risks for inaccuracies. PointClickCare EHR leads and automates this process. Built with automated workflows, condition-specific charting templates, and custom alerts, we ensure you fully document and complete every required step. The system allows tracking of patient care plans and progress towards goals to ensure the whole team is working on the same plan. It is also able to suggest interventions and goals based on prior care plans and assessments. This is not about saving a couple of minutes; it’s about getting paper documentation out of the clinical workflow.
Step 3: Coordination – Improving Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Care is a team sport, and coordination is crucial. The system easily allows for communication and coordination of care among aides, nurses, therapists, dietitians, and physicians. There is built-in secure messaging, real-time notifications of new orders and changes to orders. Each resident’s communication is documented in a central log to keep everything organized. This seamless communication prevents jumbled messages and slows hand-offs. It allows the whole care team to be alerted together to a change. The PointClickCare system is designed to enhance communication for a more collaborative care environment.
Step 4: Insights – Utilizing Real-time Analytics and Reporting
Data is only useful if analyzed. PointClickCare Analytics and Reporting convert operational and clinical data into real-time dashboards. Admins can see KPIs around quality/measure performance, occupancy trends, staff-to-resident ratios, and finances. This enables active management of potential issues such as spikes in falls, infection control trending, and monitoring AR days. The data in PointClickCare enables superior and strategic management.
Step 5: Compliance – Easing the Burden of Safety Compliance
Compliance is a constant, high-pressure burden. Our system is built to adapt to changing guidance from CMS, state, and other agencies. Point Click Care builds compliance into your workflow daily from auto MDS 3.0 scheduling, coding support, and documentation requirements for Medicare and Medicaid. The audit’s record is created automatically, and your team can generate pre-survey state-compliant readiness documentation in a few clicks, removing the rush and associated risk from the compliance audit pre-survey chaos.
Step 6: Integration – Building a Connected Care Ecosystem
No platform operates in a vacuum. A great advantage of PointClick Care is the ability to connect to third-party systems. It can connect to pharmacy management systems, lab interfaces, therapy systems, nurse call systems, and remote patient monitoring systems. This facilitates a truly connected care ecosystem. Consider, for example, how a medication order from EHR can flow to the pharmacy and vitals from a Bluetooth-enabled device can auto-populate the chart. This seamless integration is a sign of the successfulness of PointClick Care implementation.
Step 7: Engagement – Engaging Residents and Families
Today’s families want seamless access and communication. The PointClick Care Family Experience portal is designed to facilitate this. Families can obtain secure updates on their family member’s care plan, see scheduled activities, receive photos, communicate with staff, and more, all on their mobile phones. This promotes trust, decreases the number of routine calls made to nursing, and increases the perception of your community as a contemporary engaged care partner. It also reduces family members’ uncertainty by transforming their experience to one of collaboration to facilitate their loved ones’ care.
Step 8: Mobility – Empowering Staff With The Ability to Work From Anywhere
Care occurs at the bedside, not behind a desk. For many staff members, the mobile capability of PointClickCare has transformed their workflows. With their mobile devices, nurses can document their assessments, enter medications using barcode administration, and access care plans at the bedside. This portability enhances accuracy (there’s no need to transcribe from a paper document later), boosts staff productivity, and promotes enhanced eye contact and interaction with residents. When PointClickCare is able to support workflow mobility, care teams have the resources they need to be modern and flexible.
Step 9: Financial Health – Optimizing Revenue Cycle Management
Being financially healthy is a prerequisite to fulfilling your mission. The financial tools on the platform support the revenue cycle process end-to-end. From effective revenue management by ensuring every billable service and supply is captured to generating claims and submitting them to payers on a timely basis, you will be paid for the care you provided without revenue leaks. Built-in tools to track authorization, denial management, and payer mix analysis are a must-have. Utilizing the PointClickCare financial module results in a drastic improvement to your organization’s revenue sustainability.
Step 10: Evolution – Committing to Continuous Improvement
Technology cannot be successfully rolled out originally just once. The last step is creating a culture of continuous improvement integration with the PointClickCare platform. This involves routine reviews of the analytics to be provided with the platform, feedback from the end-users (nurses, billers, etc.) or other staff who will utilize the platform, ongoing training, platform awareness, and provision of new features to the users. The company producing PointClickCare technologies is continually updating its programs; consequently, it is of vital importance for your organization to be able to update its internal processes to ensure ongoing beneficial effects.
Real-World Impact: Case Study Snapshot
*** __________ This is a 120-bed SNF with the usual high documentation time, mediation errors, communication complaints with family members complaints. __________**
After fully implementing PointClickCare, specifically mobile EHR, family portal, and other features, measurable results in this old SNF were achieved within 6 months.
- Clinical: 40% reduction of medication errors due to bedside barcode scanning.
- Operational: Each nurse, during their shift, saved an average of 90 mins from charting. Nurses charting = more time for direct patient care.
- Satisfaction: Family members of the patients (or residents) had a 35% satisfaction increase from portal survey responses and communicated via portal transparency.
- Financial: Clean claims improved by 15%.
This demonstrates that a strategic, integrated approach to the PointClickCare system results in Performance Improvement across all departments in an SNF. Overcoming Challenges and Considerations
Though powerful, a successful PointClickCare journey takes planning. Some of these considerations include:
Change Management
Shifting processes from the usage of paper or old systems is a people and processes shift, not just a tech change. Super-users should be trained to advocate for and guide their peers through the shift to a new system.
Data Migration
Data migration must be clean and accurate. This is a planning phase, so take the necessary time.
Customization vs. Standardization
Standardizations and best practices of the industry must be adopted to ensure the system workflows do not become overcomplicated.
Ongoing Support
Both internal and vendor-supported ongoing technical support and optimization must be planned out.
The Future of Care with PointClickCare
Based on the trajectory of PointClickCare, we see the future of intelligent, interconnected, and preventative care. We see PointClickCare expanding its role to:
Advanced Predictive Analytics
The use of artificial intelligence to analyze, determine, and predict the likelihood of a patient deteriorating clinically or being readmitted to a hospital.
Expanded Interoperability
Seamlessly, and to improve continuous care, we want to integrate with hospital systems, primary care providers, and specialist providers.
Value-Based Care Enablement
Providing tools to help determine and analyze data for better reporting in order to meet the requirements for risk-based and quality/outcome-rewarded alternative payment models.
The progress of PointClickCare will help determine how service providers will deliver, manage and finance senior care in the future.
Conclusion: toward building a sustainable future of quality.
If you want to look to the future of long-term care, you will need to consider PointClickCare as a partner. There is more to PointClickCare than electronic record keeping. PointClickCare is the operational engine for clinical excellence, the sustainable financial model, and the communication framework to engender confidence. A service provider can consolidate data, apply an evolutionary approach, and lighten the challenges faced in a facility. There is a mastery of technology and a focus on the technology that will empower the workforce, protect the residents, and build an enduring organization that will deliver high-quality, sustainable care. This is the journey that PointClickCare offers.
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