In order to position your hospital or practice as a specialized cardiovascular center, an outside accreditation can compel you to improve quality of care and patient standards. Earning Accreditation for Cardiovascular Excellence (ACE) has an important role in how hospitals with cardiovascular centers of excellence can differentiate themselves and increase reputation and public perception. Sponsored by the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI), ACE exists solely to evaluate and accredit excellence in heart health. The third party, physician-led organization reviews, evaluates, and certifies hospitals and other facilities in numerous cardiovascular subspecialties, including:

• Carotid Artery Stenting Accreditation

• Cath/PCI Accreditation

• Congenital Heart Disease Accreditation for PCCL

• Diagnostic Catheterization Accreditation

• Electrophysiology Accreditation

• Peripheral Vascular Intervention Accreditation

Although not all programs will be a good fit for each hospital, seeking ACE accreditation is an important step in developing a positive public and professional perception. Facilities recognized for excellence are more likely to:

• Be rated higher both locally and nationally

• Reduce the expenses associated with managing patient care

• Minimize the risks and complications of challenging procedures

ACE Accreditation Process

The ACE review process is complex and comprehensive, providing a thorough way for to empirically evaluate both management and delivery of care for cardiovascular centers of excellence. However, success may depend on a facility’s willingness to overhaul previously acceptable standards. Evaluations by ACE are performed using gold-standard peer-reviewed criteria, putting committee members on the ground in your facility to determine standards of care, patient management, staff proficiency, and more. According to the ACE Website, the path to accreditation includes:

• Completing an Online Application: An in-house review of the application is performed by ACE staff to ensure completeness.

• Data Review: Nurse and physician reviewers will be assigned to review application data and identify potential issues or items that require further clarification. Physician reviewers are selected from a multidisciplinary pool of experienced carotid stent, vascular medicine, and neurologic clinicians that are consistent with the physicians who perform CAS at the applicant institution.

• Site Visit: All facilities will be subject to an onsite review by a team of experienced, trained and objective nurse reviewers. The review includes:

• Chart audits

• Peer review

• Physical inspection

• Review of outcomes

• Interviews with key personnel

• Reviews of standard operating procedures

• Angiography Review: A random collection of angiographic studies will be collected for independent review. These studies are evaluated for image quality, adherence to angiographic standards and appropriateness.

The Importance of Patient Care Coordination and ACE Accreditation

Although ACE accreditation puts a strong focus on comprehensive facility operations, improvements in all areas of your practice can help you secure the certifications you deserve—which includes patient care coordination. Of course, improving your organizational practices won’t only help your achieve your accreditation goals, but they will also enable you to:

• Reduce costs

• Decrease discrepancies

• Comprehensively serve the patient from beginning to end

• Provide assessments

• Manage your patients and your care team in the most efficient way

If you are considering getting Accreditation for Cardiovascular Excellence for your facility, be sure to fully understand what is involved so that you—and your patients—may experience the many advantages of being ACE certified. Guideway Care can support your journey through the ACE accreditation process. Contact us if you need assistance ensuring your facility’s compliance with cardiovascular excellence accreditation standards or would like to improve patient care coordination.

In an effort to standardize healthcare evaluations for patients with limited medical experience, Healthgrades hospital rankings outline the strengths and weaknesses of facilities across the country. While rankings aren’t everything, how your facility is perceived can be extremely influential to the community around you. When you’re seeking solutions that can position you in the best possible light, patient management can be a crucial and often overlooked component. By providing a more thorough look into your management approach, patient care and retention practices, and adherence to quality regulations, it’s possible to leverage your strengths, improve weaknesses, and boost overall reputation.

The Importance of Hospital Rankings

Objectively evaluating hospitals is a loaded task, especially with the differences from facility to facility. Many organizations, like U.S. News and World Report, attempt to provide comprehensive overviews, but all rankings apply slightly different methodologies that can influence patient perceptions. Healthgrade ranks hospitals based on a wide variety of standards and services, including patient reviews, hospital quality awards, clinical quality awards, patient safety ratings, and physician performance. The addition of patient feedback in the ratings process is especially influential; this provides relatable information to patients while also offering healthcare facilities criticism that otherwise may have gone ignored.

The Art of Attracting Patients

In a competitive market like healthcare, the smallest details can make the largest difference. Your approach to patient care and organization can be critical here, offering you an opportunity to streamline operations and stand apart from the crowd. Through a new approach and a better perspective on patient satisfaction, your facility can make the decisions necessary to improve both rankings and results. Guideway Care clients are able to better attract patients through our digital marketing services, manage admissions, regulate care, and retain patients so they keep coming back. Two successful Sequence facilities, Centura Health and Alexian Brothers, are both highly ranked as top hospitals in their respective states, demonstrating a track record of educated management coupled with success-oriented goals.

Making a Difference with Sequence

In non-emergency situations, it is up to the patient to determine which healthcare facility is the proper choice. In a world where patients seek online reviews prior to making a decision about which hospital to utilize, hospital rankings are now more than ever important. When your hospital needs a way to boost rankings and serve more members of the community, Sequence Patient Tracking can assist in interpreting ranking data to achieve meaningful, successful results. We track patients from their first contact, whether an online contact form or a phone call, tracking them as they work through surgical pre-requisites, insurance verification, through their postoperative recovery to ensure they receive full support from your organization to provide them with a satisfying experience. In addition, Sequence provides you with real time monitoring and tracking of the patient through the use of a HIPAA-approved software platform. When you’d like to attract more patients and improve your reputation, both locally and nationally, Guideway Care can provide the solutions needed to achieve your goals. Contact us at 888-986-3638 to learn more about our patient tracking software or request a demo to see what our team can do to assist in increasing your hospital rankings.

A few weeks ago Bill Gates published his reading list on his blog. My boss mentioned about the book How Not to be Wrong, by Jordan Ellenberg, and suggested that I may like reading it. Here are my thoughts on workflow automation and the challenges of improving the user experience.

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5 Books to Read This Summer Here in Seattle, summer is a gift you earn by gutting out nine months of rain and gloom. The skies are clear, there’s…www.gatesnotes.com

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Reading the book, you will understand why Bill Gates would have added to his list of books to read. Having spent the last dozen years writing software to automate routine tasks and building platforms, I have realized that math has a profound impact on computing, especially automation. In my opinion automating user workflows is one of the fairly challenging computing problems to solve. Identifying use cases and building rules on what needs to happen next and how, involves a lot of common sense logic applied like mathematical deductions (deduction theorem). At work, one problem my team and I are working on solving is to apply “if this, then that” rules to automate tasks while taking into account “when and by whom.” Come to think of it, these rules are pure math and if improperly applied can cause chain and circular rule executions leading to infinity. So taking atomic transactions (derivative) and applying limits (not tending to infinity, maybe 10 for now) is helping us solve the problem of workflow automation, while limiting the number of rules one can execute on a successful completion of a transaction. The chapter Straight Locally, Curved Globally has really been an inspiration while working on this project over the last few weeks.

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Gopi Yeleswarapu Chief Technology Officer at Guideway Care

Gopi joined the Guideway Care team in 2014 with more than 10 years’ experience in developing complex software and support platforms. Since his arrival, he has led development of our software platform, Sequence, while managing development and support of the existing LeadTracker platform and all other internal IT projects.

He spent the majority of his career building scalable, communication enabled and automation oriented software platforms for Healthcare and Telecom.

Gopi earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science from Osmania University in India, and a Master’s in Computer Information Systems from the University of South Alabama.

Salesforce Connections 2016 (#cnx16) is in the books! Three exciting days at Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center set the stage for phenomenal networking, ideating, and market research around trends in what is now the evolving world of customer experience and relationship management. This inclusive, outcomes-driven approach to what was one time the segmented industries of marketing, advertising, public relations, sales, and customer service echoes the sentiments of leaders in the healthcare industry as consumers continue to expect quality outcomes and value-based care. Rising Digital Expectations: Personalizing the Entire Patient Journey “It’s a good thing to be forced to be innovative.” – Avice Meehan, Senior VP, Chief Communications Officer, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Highlighting the growing expectations of healthcare consumers for a personalized one-to-one patient journey, this breakout session focused on ways healthcare providers are addressing regulatory and data challenges while improving cross-channel digital communications to improve patient satisfaction, and to drive patient acquisition and engagement while creating lifetime advocacy. Jessica Sweeney-Platt shared with the group, “Hospital and health system executives recognize that health care is not immune to digital disruption; the rude awakening has been that the disruption is happening faster than they can respond to it.” Doug Weiss, Chief Marketing Officer at Eating Recovery Center, further highlighted the MDnetSolutions value proposition, “It’s before and after care where a big opportunity exists. Education to support families and providers can improve the customer experience and enhance the quality of care.” MDnetSolutions Can Address Opportunities to Improve the Personalized Patient Journey

1. Configurable cloud technology is a competitive advantage in how the patients are acquired, engaged, and retained
2. The patient experience should be seamless, offering a single experience with the entire care team empowered by constant, transparent communication and efficient relationship management; interoperability is key
3. Providers have a real need for a holistic view of each patient and of their practice
4. New industry thinking: Don’t build systems to solve problems, build relationships and put people and data in context
5. Education and technology should set expectations and monitor adherence throughout the patient’s journey; managing expectations allows you to manage outcomes
6. Provide the right information at the right time to inspire engagement/action
7. Surprise and delight the client so they can surprise and delight the patient

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See more news and notes from #CNX16 by visiting our social media sites and joining the conversation. For more insight into industry trends and how MDnetSolutions is addressing the immediate needs of providers across the healthcare industry, call today and ask for a product demo. 888.986.3638

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Kris Altiere, Director of Marketing & Creative As our Director of Marketing & Creative, Kris is chief architect of our creative services and manages our marketing, design, video and production teams. She has more than 15 years’ experience in creative leadership and design, and has worked with prestigious clients including Cleveland Clinic, New York Presbyterian, Baptist Health South Florida, Emory Healthcare, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Piedmont Hospital. Before joining us, she worked at AVID Design as a Senior Designer, Marketing Manager and Web Consultant. Kris earned a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design from Kennesaw State University. She also attended Auburn University.

Today’s Coffee Break post is written by Brice Kennedy — our own in-house graphic designer, illustration artist and web designer who just so happens to the be creator of Tom the Thankful Turkey. Swing by the creative quad to say hello and get a sneak peek at his next big project!

Thanksgiving is almost here!

This year we’re keeping our MDnet tradition going and bringing back Tom the Thankful Turkey. Born from a creative collaboration between Creative Director Kris Altiere, Key Account Supervisor Latonya Reid, and myself, Tom was first illustrated last year in our Call Center area as a place for our MDnet family to write and express what we’re most thankful for. In the year since, the company has grown in many ways — with new faces, new and improved products, and new clients. We have plenty to be thankful for. To celebrate our growth in 2015, Tom the Thankful Turkey returns! We’ve all had new experiences in our professional and personal lives and this is a perfect time to reflect on all that has happened in the passing months. Personally, it’s when I’m drawing “Tom” that I spare some time for the gratitude and happiness that occasionally goes missing during such a busy time of year. It’s awesome time to be alive and apart of the MDnet team who have such great things to offer the world. Already I’ve seen how much our products have helped and saved those in need and it’s something I am truly thankful for. I like what Rich Rosenzweig started and I’m excited about the direction in which Alan Creighton is taking MDnet. I feel blessed to have the love and support from my family and inspired to have opportunities to create with like-minded people. What you are most thankful for? Reflect on it and drop a line — Tom is waiting for you.

To launch our ongoing Leader’s Thought blog series, this post is written by Alan Creighton — communications mogul turned CEO of MDnetSolutions.

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It’s no secret that consumers are embracing and adopting new technologies and communication tools at an unprecedented rate. Within the telecom industry, the demand for asynchronous engagement — “what I want, when and where I want it” — has exploded, and telecom providers have delivered. With applications for a multitude of devices, the industry has set the bar for communication preferences and enabled consumer brands to have this kind of conversation

And this is where the healthcare industry has fallen behind.

While numerous studies that have indicated that patient engagement improves healthcare outcomes, the healthcare industry as whole has not addressed the changes in communication preferences that consumers, their patients, expect. Yes, brick-and-mortar practices have developed patient portals; but they primarily serve as one-way information aggregators within that practice. It’s the lack of outgoing communication from providers and the ability to consume patient information outside of the brick and mortar that is affecting how active a role patients take in managing their own health. With consumers far ahead of providers and squarely in a highly-engaged phase, this new generation of “consumer patients” is frustrated that they can’t have more communication with their providers when and where they want to receive it. Where telecom technologies have evolved to allow brands to keep up with consumer demand, the CRM technology supporting healthcare practices has remained largely stagnant. In order to thrive, practices must begin to explore the benefits of digital dialogue throughout the patient care continuum and outside the of the typical healthcare setting, particularly with post-discharge follow-up. By enabling dialogue, practices can efficiently and effectively utilize tools of engagement to help their patients lead healthier lives.

So what have we learned?

For healthcare to succeed in the “consumer patient” generation, integration and interoperability among healthcare IT applications are crucial. Because very few healthcare vendors have fully embraced this, the standards and protocols are lacking when it comes to sharing data and exchanging information. This, too, creates a deficiency when transferring patient data and results in an inefficient, frustrating experience.

How do we help improve that experience?

One, we have to communicate outside of the healthcare setting with methods that patients, our “consumers”, are most comfortable and most responsive. Two, the healthcare industry must work together to do a better job of sharing information in order to stay effective and relevant. Simply put, healthcare practices that choose not integrate choose to become obsolete. The need for that communication has primed healthcare data to become part of an information system that empowers and educates patients. There is a huge opportunity in the market to utilize the tools of engagement that we know patients, our consumers, have adopted from other consumer brands. Companies that have tuned into this opportunity are beginning to introduce tools that are driven by communication preferences and designed to integrate with existing EMR systems. By adapting their preferred methods of information exchange, healthcare providers can now offer a more-relevant dialogue to better engage with their patients. About MDnetSolutions: We are leveraging communication innovations, and structuring our software for integration, to facilitate conversations between healthcare providers and patients. By creating tools that provide a multi-level view of the patient pathway, and integrate with EMRs, we can also keep a practice’s staff informed of where each patient is within in the provider’s healthcare continuum to prevent them from stalling in their cycle of care. Learn more about these solutions at www.mdnetsolutions.com

In tribute to Clement Clarke Moore, we present to you Guideway Care version of the author’s famed poem, “The Night Before Christmas”, written in 1822. ‘Twas the day before Christmas, when all through the medical practice Not a creature was stirring because all the phone calls were being handled by Guideway Care boutique medical call center. Team members were typing information with care, knowing Dr. Nicholas soon would be seeing patients there. The patients were nestled all snug in their house, while visions of online seminars danced in their brain. There was no need to leave or get out in the rain as they watched and learned without any pain. When all of a sudden there arose such a clatter, I ran to the phone to see what was the matter. Away to my cell phone I flew like a flash, I slide to unlock it and the button I did mash. The glow of the phone hit my cheek and I seriously wondered to whom I would speak. When what to my inquisitive ears should hear a perky voice saying we are glad you viewed our video dear. The little team member so lively and fair, I knew in a moment I was in good care. With compassion she listened as I described my condition and together we crafted a plan to make it better. Do you struggle to walk or catch your breath when you talk? Is your blood pressure high? Do you eat too much pie? You have a problem and that ain’t no lie, but we can help we won’t deny. You watched the seminar and that’s a key part now let’s make an appointment and get a head start. I was excited down deep in my heart and I wanted to see what would be as my bariatric treatment began I felt like a new man. When I first saw the doc, he gave me a wink. You are perfect, perfect indeed. Yes, oh yes I do believe you can be fitted with a gastric sleeve. I was excited and never enraged, because this bariatric practice was fully engaged. With Guideway Care they did not fret.  The medical staff was on the attack thanks to lead and patient track. They followed my progress and made sure that I didn’t falter or lose my step. Records at the practice were meticulously kept. It was so efficient I nearly wept. The treatment is great it is going well. And oh boy do I have a story to tell. I am no longer chubby and plump. I feel better now with less of a rump. Diabetes type 2 is no longer in view, and I can climb up the stairs without gasping for air. I am so happy about my weight-loss surgery and I can safely say without fear of perjury. If you’re a healthcare provider connect with the crowd. We have your new year’s resolution and it’s Guideway Care. You won’t regret, chose Guideway Care and let the engagement begin again and again. Merry Christmas everyone.