Editorial note: This guest blog is by Annie Erstling, chief strategy officer for our health technology partner, Forcura. It includes insights from Axxess’ panel discussion during Forcura’s annual CONNECT Summit – “Earning a Seat at the Table: Are Post-Acute Care Providers Ready to Compete in a Value-Based Care Economy?” earlier this year.
As technology for the post-acute care sector evolves, companies will continue to innovate to address a whole host of business challenges. Axxess has taken a hard look at the burnout situation facing the industry. Axxess has developed solutions that advance beyond common process improvements and focus instead on foundational human needs professionals are experiencing in the field today.
Axxess elaborated on these developments during a panel featured in this year’s Forcura CONNECT Summit. The panel included Tim Ingram, senior vice president of interoperability, as moderator; Tammy Ross, senior vice president of professional services; and Arlene Maxim, senior vice president of clinical services.
Tammy began the discussion with some sobering results from a survey Axxess conducted with Home Health Care News. A key theme from the survey was that clinical staff want to receive more organizational training from their agencies. Tammy and Arlene explained that many post-acute nurses feel uncertain about the specific industry tools they must use as they enter the field or transition from one agency to another. This causes frequent errors and corrections and understandably leads to frustration. Axxess considered the issue and came up with an idea to assist clients.
“We {at Axxess} have created a certification program that allows staff members to better understand the ‘why’ [behind what they do],” Arlene said.
The program enables staff members to take the online training and become a certified user on their own time, providing nurses with the ability to gain the in-depth training they seek to properly perform operational tasks. Agencies value the certification because it offers assurance that a trained nurse can slide into any shift or setting with confidence and competence, Arlene said.
Another solution was developed to address the greatest concern facing post-acute care today, the massive staffing shortage. Arlene described a workforce staffing application Axxess created, that provides staff with organizational information as part-time nursing help available in their region, what clinical preferences they may have and whether they are certified Axxess users. This offers nurses in need of a break the ability to arrange a shift replacement or a change in their schedule. The opportunity for clinicians to easily access one another for some occasional relief is crucial during a time when fewer of them may often be pushed to their limit.
“Making sure we [can help provide] the gift of time … is a huge benefit for our staff members,” Arlene said.
These developments resonate with Forcura and reinforce why we are so proud to partner with Axxess. We both strive to keep our clients top of mind in everything we do. As a technology company, it can be tempting to fixate only on the big, flashy solutions that offer a lot of bells and whistles. Sometimes you must take a step back and ask, “Is this really what the end user wants? Does this create a meaningful impact on their ability to provide care every day?” We understand that ultimately, we must make every effort to solve human challenges – for a special subset of society who cares for other humans. It is and should be at the heart of everything we do in the post-acute care industry.
Like Axxess, Forcura seeks the most effective ways to make your operations run smoothly, to remove as many friction points for your staff as possible and enable them to work at the top of their licenses. We constantly innovate for this purpose. We are proud of the gains we have helped providers make in reducing administrative expenses, optimizing revenue cycles and delivering better patient outcomes.
We look forward to revolutionizing the industry together in the future – through our partnership with Axxess, among our more than 700 client agencies and consequently with all healthcare workers, who deserve the highest regard for their critical and noble contributions to humanity.
To learn more about the state of post-acute care and the industry’s readiness for a value-based market, be sure to review Forcura’s original study, “2022: The State of Connectivity in Post-Acute Care,” which debuted as a complement to the Summit and is based on a cross-sectional survey of healthcare providers and proprietary data.
To learn more about Forcura, visit our partner webpage and request a product demo or consultation today!
