Caring for patients with numerous chronic health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension or chronic heart disease is like putting together a giant puzzle with constantly moving pieces, and if you are a smaller hospital or a comfortable independent medical practice, you are familiar with the sheer amount of work involved in keeping all the pieces together.
It’s not simply a prescription anymore, since there is a lot of coordination to do between visits, endless telephone calls, checking in on symptoms from weeks ago, and making sure nothing big is missing between visits.
It’s precisely this which has made locating the absolute best chronic care management software extremely crucial for small healthcare teams that wish to provide their patients with the finest care without letting their staff drown in piles of dull paperwork.
What Is Chronic Care Management Software?
Chronic care management (CCM) software is a special digital platform that is used specifically to manage, organize and monitor the care of patients with two or more chronic conditions that are likely to persist for at least a year.
The best chronic care management software is not simply a computer-based filing system for storing standard medical data; it is a dynamic, living system that brings doctors, nurses, care coordinators and patients together to ensure that everyone is on the same page. It’s a place where you can create very customized treatment plans, monitor the exact amount of time your staff spends speaking with patients on the phone or via secure message, and record every little detail about a patient’s daily health battle.
Imagine a smart, automated assistant working alongside your clinical team and helping you remember who needs a follow-up call, what goals a patient is looking to achieve, and exactly what to note in the chart to ensure Medicare and private insurance companies pay you for the time you invest in care management outside of the four walls of your clinic.
Benefits of Using the Best CCM Software
Relief from the daily chaos of your clinic is a huge benefit that comes with your investment in a high-quality CCM platform, no more trying to piece together a patient’s journey with sticky notes, spreadsheets and disjointed paper charts.
In addition to getting rid of the clutter in the office, smaller practices can tap into a brand-new monthly revenue stream of Medicare’s specific CCM billing codes by using the best chronic care management software, and this revenue stream was previously largely untouched simply because smaller practices lacked the meticulous minute-by-minute tracking that satisfied stringent insurance audits.
Most importantly, your staff can do what they are trained to do, that is, provide warmer, more personalized interactions to your patients, fewer days spent in the ER and a real feeling of security for your patients, knowing that their medical team is looking after them even when they are sitting on their own living room couch.
Top Features to Look for in CCM Software
If you’re actively looking for a platform that will make your life easier instead of racking up huge technology-induced headaches, there are a few features that are extremely essential and cannot be canned.
The first thing you need is a very precise and detailed clock that automatically records all of the time that a care coordinator spends looking at files, talking on the telephone or making adjustments to a care plan. If your clock is goofy, you’re going to miss hundreds of dollars per patient, every month.
The critical components that the best chronic care management software should have to make your clinic run smoothly:
- Automated Time Tracking: Records all the minutes of care interactions effortlessly, ensuring that the billing sheets are 100% accurate without staff having to click stopwatches.
- Dynamic Care Plan Builders: Enables your clinical team to quickly build, edit and share detailed care plans that patients can access and use.
- Seamless EHR Integration: Connects your primary medical record system with CCM and allows data to be automatically transmitted back and forth between the two, eliminating data duplication.
- Built-in Medicare Billing Logic: Automatically bundles your monthly tracking of care in clean, audit-proof claim templates that match current CPT codes.
How the Best CCM Software Improves Patient Engagement
If a patient leaves the clinic and forgets everything, you’re not going to get the most out of a care plan, so the best chronic care management software makes a huge, beautiful push to make sure the patient is active and enthusiastic about their own healthcare journey.
They typically include a patient portal that is very user-friendly, and automated text messaging options to remind patients to take their medication, measure their blood sugar or record their daily weight. Since these messages appear warm and nonclinical, patients feel like they have an effective, comforting lifeline to their care team and naturally feel more inclined to be in touch with their care team before having a little difficulty or health problem becomes a major medical emergency that lands them in the hospital.
AI and Automation in Modern CCM Software
AI and intelligent automation have been a real game-changer in the healthcare technology landscape, particularly for smaller hospitals with limited resources who need to take what they have and make it go further than ever.
The superior chronic care management software does not do away with the need for a nurse; rather, it automates tedious, repetitive tasks such as combing through thousands of patient records to immediately mark those who have not yet followed up with a checkup or who have unusual but potentially harmful patterns in the data that is uploaded.
Think of an automatic system that would pick up on the fact that a patient’s daily blood pressure has been gradually climbing over a two-week span, then instantly alert the nurse to the patient’s name, so that they are at the top of the list of patients to see; that’s the power of modern automation and it would save your team hours of patient sorting, while allowing you to take action before it goes downhill.
How to Select the Best Chronic Care Management Software
When it comes to the ideal platform for your particular clinic, it’s not about purchasing the most costly platform available with a thousand bells and whistles you’ll never need, but rather a platform that fits comfortably into your daily workflow like a comfortable glove.
If their programs don’t play along, your team will find themselves having to input the same information twice in your current Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, leading to tremendous frustration and inefficiency, so you’ll need to sit down with your clinical staff and ask some hard questions about how seamlessly they can communicate with your existing software.
Be sure to find software vendors that will provide very detailed, practical training and customer support and always look for software that is highly customisable so you can manipulate the templates to suit the needs of your local community hospital or small clinic.
Conclusion
It doesn’t have to be overwhelming and tech-heavy that makes you think of chronic care management as a nightmare for your practice, but when you have the right chronic care management software in your scheme of things, it’s a force for good. It fills the uncomfortable time between clinic visits, helps avoid cluttered insurance audits, unlocks new streams of income and provides your busy clinical teams the time off they need to do what they do best!
FAQs
What is the best chronic care management software?
The very best chronic care management software will seamlessly integrate into your current clinic workflows, provide a fail-safe automated time tracking feature for simple billing, and have a very user-friendly interface that your clinic staff and your senior patients can easily use without frustration. Tellihealth is very successful in the market, and it all comes down to the software’s ability to support your existing EHR.
What features should the best CCM software include?
The very best CCM platform should include automated, background time tracking, a flexible and comprehensive care plan builder, built-in compliance with Medicare rules for claims, secure communications for patient outreach, and robust data analytics to identify high-risk patient trends in real time.
Can CCM software integrate with EHR systems?
Yes, the top class CCM software products from the market are designed with sophisticated integration features such as HL7 and FHIR protocols, enabling the effortless interoperability between your current EHR systems and the CCM software so as patient health records, clinical notes, and medication lists can effortlessly be synced between the platforms without having to do any double data entry.
