HealthNautica
Optimizing Coordinated Patient Care with Electronic Surgery Scheduling

Aside from the standard set of clinical prerequisites, surgical procedures requireeffectual coordinationamong multiple entities inside a healthcare facility. From surgery scheduling to completion of pre-operative tests within diagnostic normsand the subsequent billing procedures, clinical workflows call for transparent communication between every department in order to ensure the smooth transition of a patientscare through every clinical stage. However, communication silos have plagued the surgical sector for a while now, as most of the interactions between a physician’s office and the surgical department occur through phone calls and faxes. These channels of engagement have proven to be highly unreliable and time-consuming, wherein each workflow participant is reliant on another to get a job done with minimal knowledge pertaining to patients’ health.

Steering away from the inaccurate and siloed faxes or onerous telephonic conversations is HealthNautica – an organization dedicated to streamlining and improving communication among hospitals, patients, and physicians. TheChicago-based company efficiently manages the entiretyof perioperative processes without changing the existing surgery scheduling system. eORders—the comprehensive, easy to use cloud-based solution by HealthNautica—offers an indepth overview of a facility’s surgery grid in real-time. It provides physician offices with insight into the OR rooms’ availability and occupancy, thereby drastically reducing phone calls to the facility’s scheduling department, in turn actualizing the scheduling process.

Replacing the arduous and error-prone faxing/telephonic processes with an electronic form configured to each facility’s requirements, e-ORders assist a physician in scheduling cases without having to call the facility. From a clinical perspective, the platform expedites a smooth patient care progression through all the clinical stages, ranging from clinical clearances to recording patient history. Likewise, from the business standpoint, the cloud-based platform also provisions complete transparency of patient information at each stage, communicating them back and forth across different departments and evaluating relevant clinical alerts. “We simplify a three-way handshake between physicians, hospitals, and patients by easily handling the perioperative process, all the while facilitating patient access, insurance eligibility, patient payment estimation, and also conveying the status of the patient health to the physicians at the same time on the same platform,”avers Peter J. Karahalios, COO of HealthNautica.

In addition to the dire need for transparent communication and coordinated care, cancellations are a recurring problem across the surgical department, resulting in substantialfinancial expenditures that come along with last-minute cancellations or equipment breakdown.

Amid these conditions, the Patient Readiness Tracking dashboard within eORders enables both the physician’s office and the facility to quickly identify and track patients that are not yet ready for surgery while also tracking Insurance Eligibility, Precertification, Pre-Admission Testing, H&P, Clearances, and Vendor Rep Notification.

We simplify a three-way handshake between physicians, hospitals, and patients by easily handling the perioperative process—while facilitating patient access, insurance eligibility, patient payment estimation, and also conveying the status of the patients to the physicians at the same time on the same platform

Patient Readiness status is also instantly available to physicians on mobile devices. As a result, constant engagement with the patient and all other parties involved in surgery ensures that an operation doesn’t have to be postponed for avoidable reasons. This efficient reduction in 24-hour cancellation rates not only improves the financial bottom line for both the facility and the physician but also certifies a better experience for the patients and the providers. “None of our customersarefacinga 24-hour cancellation rate over 0.3 percent, which is remarkably a new standard in the industry,” states AI Mulaomerovic, CPO of HealthNautica.

Forging ahead, HealthNautica is advancing on several fronts. The company is planning to further improvise and overhaul its solution set while working on dynamic texting applications that are highly useful for reaching out to patients more effectively. Besides, similar to how surgeons are equipped with patient schedules, the company is working on facilitating the same functionfor anesthesia and other ancillary facilities required for surgical procedures on a daily basis. “We are also modifying the enormous data set that we have been able to put together over the years,and applyingrules to involve some more individuals in providing actual coordinated care,” concludes Peter.