Mobile Solution from CellTrak™ provides Safety, Improved Care Coordination and Accountability for Canon Hospice
Schaumburg, IL (March 20, 2014) – Canon Hospice serves a 150 mile radius from Baton Rouge, the Northshore of New Orleans, Greater New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast to provide comfort care for Hospice patients. When, originally created, the founders decided to create a program that offered the hospice philosophy at home and on an inpatient unit which was manned with hospice professionals.
Canon Hospice opened its doors in 1996 to offer services that focused on the patient and family, not just the disease. Canon Hospice is dedicated to helping patients and families accept terminal illness positively and resourcefully, to preserve dignity, and to endure the challenges that are accompanied at this critical time of life. They are focused on the patient as well as the family. The family is considered part of the team that helps to provide care for the patient. Canon recognized the need to provide support to the family after a patients passing and they provide bereavement counseling 13 months.
In order to address the ongoing regulatory and process needs in healthcare, Canon Hospice selected Schaumburg, IL based CellTrak Technologies to address the business challenges of delivering hospice care. This included a comprehensive easy to use solution platform that streamlines scheduling, automates paper based forms and data capture, provides actual mileage tracking, electronically verifies visits, and enables payroll processing along with alert driven workflow to improve the agency efficiency in care delivery. In addition the new solution provides a command center real time view of staff location, patient location and time at that location which helps improve overall safety of the caregivers.
Sue C. May, Administrator for Canon Hospice commented, “Scheduling of each staff has become streamlined for a quick response to care, ease of amending information is simplified and we no longer have to purchase paper forms. We didn't want a costly back office system. We were presented exactly what we wanted; a custom fit solution from CellTrak. CellTrak created a program that was a great fit for what we needed to be successful agency”.
May added, “We were guided for usage and supported through the entire transition. CellTrak’s support has been extraordinary during the transition of all disciplines. We chose to get nurses, certified nursing assistants, chaplains and marketing on the mobile solution. This allowed all disciplines to have ease of use into their daily jobs. Long paper forms are now accessed and documented on a mobile tablet device. Nurses previously spent entire days on catching up on documentation forms and now that is not the case. These nurses have more time to deliver care and restructure their time management. CMS has recently required two more paper forms of documentation regarding tabulations for Medicare. These forms will be crucial to be filled out, and much easier to complete via handheld devices.”
Canon Hospice has the goal to allow their patients to live each day to the fullest and enjoy their time with family and friends. They are committed in meeting the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of our patients and their families. In allowing more time to live each day more fully, Canon Hospice began to implement technology to firstly focus on the staff that are administering care as well as take less time on papers and more time on care. The technology not only services their organization it creates more accurate documentation and time for comfort care of the patient and the family.
May added “We realized we needed a solution that could give us visibility to where our staff is at all times for their safety. Our staff is more than caregivers; they are people that we are responsible for us as an organization. The solution allows us to monitor the safety of staff and make sure they are not in any one location too long or in danger. ”
CellTrak forms automation features enable electronic data capture at the point of care, previously captured on agency paper forms. Point of care electronic documentation is enabled on fully customized forms with logic to toggle and validate. This solution is ideal for assessments, service reports, staff evaluations, etc. Captured data is easily accessible via portal. Reporting and configurable alerts create efficient agency operations. These operational alerts including high travel and no GPS support agency-customized clinical alerts as well. Sue C. May commented, “We have many documentation forms that are high in cost to print and are usually filled out incorrectly or illegibly. The use of CellTrak has made many processes easier. Payroll is coming directly out of the CellTrak Visit Manager™ portal which is also where we can now monitor uncompleted visits and other operational affecting alerts.”
Canon Hospices relationship with the community is one of a kind. The Akula Foundation was founded in 1994 as a non-profit 501-(c) 3 organization by Dr. Shiva Akula. The Akula Foundation is dedicated to providing resources to the community to extend hospices services to all members of the community, regardless of ability to pay. The program is built on three main structures: Care, Educate and Dream. The non-profit organization provide services to indigent patients and families who would otherwise be underserved, provide continuing education to hospice professionals, the medical and lay community regarding the latest information on Hospice and Palliative Care. Finally they are able to grant special individual requests and provide support to Canon Hospice patients and families who are struggling with the financial burdens encountered while dealing with a terminal illness. Canon also offers three Children’s Bereavement Camps per year (Camp Swan) and has a Reminiscence Programs offered in over 60 locations in their service area which provides support to seniors.
Michael K. Wons, President and CEO of CellTrak Technologies added, “CellTrak is incredibly moved by the work done by Canon Hospice. The team at Canon used our platform to remove paper, empower the care staff and to reach out to patients and their families with the overall goal of improving care in the time of need. ” Wons added that, “We look forward to a continued partnership with this wonderful organization.”
CellTrak offers a family of mobile solutions built on the needs and input from the healthcare continuum. With solutions that start with an easy to use mobile device to empower your workforce to dynamically manage care delivery, care planning/coordination, and care team collaboration. CellTrak includes portal applications that provide real-time visibility and action for your entire care team. Importantly, CellTrak enables any size agency a custom fit solution to allow more time spent on care and less on paperwork and redundant work. Together, CellTrak and Canon partnered to provide safety and better care for those in need.
Stop by and visit CellTrak in booth #217 at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) annual summit, March 26th-28th at the Gaylord Conference Center in Washington DC.
About Canon Hospice
Canon Hospice is dedicated to helping patients and families accept terminal illness positively and resourcefully, to preserve dignity, and to endure the challenges that are accompanied at this critical time of life. We are always mindful of the great privilege we are granted through our hospice ministry to express compassion, respect, sensitivity, hope and love. Care is provided by a team of highly skilled professionals. Our goal is to allow our patients to live each day to the fullest and enjoy their time with family and friends. We are committed in meeting the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of our patients and their families. Canon Hospice serves a 150 mile radius from Baton Rouge, Northshore, Greater New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast For more information please visit: www.canonhospice.com