Challenge
While it's common for patients with diabetes living in long-term care facilities to have standing orders for blood glucose monitoring every few hours, it's also common that the physician in charge may not review the results before a new test is conducted. When this occurs, insurance companies don't reimburse the care facility for the cost of the test. More importantly, not reviewing tests regularly meant that healthcare providers were missing diabetic episodes, resulting in adverse outcomes, including health complications or even deaths.
When a healthcare technology solutions company realized the extent of this problem, they sought to develop a patient-event notification system that would automatically upload the standard diabetes test results and securely send them to the provider. If the provider did not respond within a set amount of time, the system would automatically follow an escalation protocol, sending the results to the next level provider, etc. The process would continue to escalate until the issue was resolved. If the results revealed a diabetic event that needed immediate attention, the provider could create the necessary care plan to minimize negative outcomes.
They also wanted to build in an option within the system that a company could create a notification system that worked specifically with its own diabetes-care tools. This would strengthen customer loyalty to its specific product and brand. With a plan in mind, they reached out to Fusion Alliance to develop and launch this game-changing application.
The greatest challenge of incorporating a digital experience in healthcare would be building this system within the security and privacy regulations. However, our team has in-depth experience working in regulated industries as well as a broadly integrated technical proficiency, a clear understanding of security and usability issues, and the ability to meaningfully engage and wrap solutions around business processes.
Solution
Our Fusion team knew this system would have to navigate complex relationships with patients and providers while complying with both industry regulations and patient confidentiality standards. We worked directly with the client to develop, pilot, and grow the diabetic-event notification system, taking care to keep patient privacy and HIPAA laws as a high priority. To do so, we created a high-security data center to ensure strong security throughout the portal.
We also prioritized the user experience and functionality of the site because our team knew that if providers didn't find it usable, they wouldn't embrace the technology. We implemented a web-based caregiver interface with features that would support unified messaging so providers could receive messaging in a way that best suited them.
The pilot program successfully determined that the new event-notification system would substantially assist in improving patient care, patient satisfaction, and quality of life, while increasing reimbursement rates and lowering operating costs for long-term care facilities. The company earned immediate success and brand loyalty due to its absolute focus on the customer.
