Closing the gap between the high-quality outcomes home-based care providers want and the administrative processes that often overburden them is the mission of every healthcare technology company. How these companies choose to partner with one another is particularly crucial to this mission because no tech vendor can provide a total solution for our complicated healthcare system.
This is where Forcura’s preferred partnership with leading Electronic Medical Record (EMR) developer Homecare Homebase (HCHB) provides mutual clients with advantages to help them manage their business more effectively and focus on patient care.
Since 2018, Forcura’s healthcare workflow management platform has been integrated with HCHB’s technology, ensuring home-based care agencies experience superior stability as reliable and highly secure patient data flows seamlessly between Forcura’s referral and orders management components and HCHB’s clinical system of record.
The combined power of the Forcura + HCHB integration was a focal point of a recent joint webinar entitled “Closing the Gap: Tech for Intake and Smart Referrals.” Andrew Biviano, VP of Interoperability for HCHB, described Forcura as “a very effective front door” to the EMR’s intake workflow processes while Annie Erstling, COO of Forcura, acknowledged HCHB’s critical role in Forcura’s ongoing efforts to achieve greater interoperability and realize maximum potential with product enhancements.
The latter was highlighted during the webinar, as Forcura discussed enhancements – slated for release in summer 2023 – to its referral management functionality. When used collectively, the new features of this “referral hub” will enable intake staff to:
- See all referrals from various sources, regardless of method or format, in one inbox;
- Spend less time keying – patient demographics and critical referral data elements are automatically populated within Forcura;
- Make appropriate decisions regarding acceptance or denial based on how the key data (including referral source and payer) matches with the agency’s priorities or business rules; and
- Submit the completed referral to HCHB in just a click.
As Annie and Anthony agreed, this new functionality empowers staff to select “smart referrals” and in a much quicker manner, increasing an agency’s opportunity to accept more referrals while reducing the possibility of errors that lead to duplicate and declined referrals later.
“We talk about the time aspect of [these referral management enhancements] in terms of less operational burden … but I also think about it in terms of the response time,” Andrew said. “It's just a more competitive market and some of these sources are broadcasting referrals out to multiple agencies, [so] answering quickly is important as is certainly answering intelligently, saying ‘yes’ to the patients that you know fit your agency and the profile that you're looking for.”
“I think what we can do is to help align interconnectivity between referral sources and receivers,” Annie added. “People want to be easy to do business with, and it's specifically the organization receiving the referral who [our combined] technology can help in aligning the relationships and incentives on both sides of the equation.”
The upcoming enhancements punctuated an underlying theme of how Forcura and HCHB work together on an ongoing basis to innovate and anticipate future client needs. To that end, the panelists touched on the HCHB 2023 Users Conference coming June 12-14 to the Sheraton Dallas Hotel, where attendees will have the opportunity to hear from experts in more than 30 breakout sessions.
Andrew will facilitate a discussion regarding API strategies, while Annie will join a panel including representatives from LHC Group and Reliant at Home to talk more about how home-based care agencies can drive smart referrals and transform their business.
“I think hearing directly from these two organizations and how they are thinking differently and bigger about how to stop accepting just any referral and start accepting the right referrals should be a really interesting conversation,” Annie said.
To hear more about these and other great topics that were discussed, including industry trends, how to leverage the right technology, and what should be considered table stakes for a solid technology partner, view the recording now available on demand.
