California Providence hospitals select Allscripts for new homecare automation systems

Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center of Burbank, Calif., and Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center of Torrance, Calif., announced they have selected Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) for their new homecare automation systems.

Both California Providence hospitals will provide bidirectional interfaces between their Meditech inpatient systems and Allscripts Homecare, allowing patient demographic and insurance information to flow automatically into the homecare application.

Allscripts Homecare offers billing, scheduling, and an Electronic Health Record in a unified, seamless electronic system. When a patient is referred to a homecare agency, the staff uses the application to find out which nurse is scheduled to be in the patient's area at that time. During home visits, nurses use the EHR to document their observations and the services they have provided. The nurses can compare their assessments from previous visits while documenting current visit data. They can also generate customized care plans and OASIS quality reports for Medicare. Agency staff can track orders and create standard and customized reports, using intuitive features of the Windows-based application.

"The vision of healthcare information technology is to connect what's disconnected, including improving the critical handoffs between inpatient care and home health services," said Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts. "Providence and Allscripts share the goal of using our homecare application to improve these transitions of care and enhance home care while providing the efficiency that home health agencies need to survive and thrive."