Advanced Home Care^TM

Background
Advanced Home Care is a JCAHO Accredited, non-profit organization, and provides a full range of home care services, specializing in nursing, infusion, nutrition services, respiratory care services, home medical equipment and rehabilitation equipment. Headquartered in High Point, North Carolina, the company has twenty-six branches in Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina, and is on the leading edge of new approaches to improved patient management in the homecare industry. Advanced Home Care’s mission is to meet the needs of patients, caregivers, hospitals, physicians, payer sources, health professionals, health care facilities and the community by providing full service, high quality, innovative, cost effective, alternative site health care in serviced areas. Their highly trained staff of pharmacists, infusion coordinators, respiratory therapists, patient service technicians, nurses, physical therapists, dietitians and social workers can meet virtually every home care need. As a testament to their dedication and focus, Advanced Home Care was a winner of the National 2004-2005 HME Excellence Award for Best Home Medical Equipment Provider. Advanced won this award in part due to their focus on comprehensive disease management for COPD, CHF, and Obstructive Sleep Apnea patients.

The medSage Technologies Solution
Patient communication is a critical element of any successful disease management program, and Advanced was looking for a way to economically communicate with the difficult-to-reach Obstructive Sleep Apnea patients. In 2006, Advanced became aware of the new, revolutionary Patient Management System developed by medSage Technologies. medSage Technologies, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an application services provider (ASP), and has developed an optimized system for contacting and polling homecare patients.

medSage incorporates state-of-the-art IVR technology, a proprietary speech database of difficult homecare patient populations, and an innovative software system (patent pending) to drive the behind the scenes operations. The system delivers a personalized message to the patient, unique to each provider, and the message is actually delivered in the voice(s) selected by the provider.

Results
Advanced Home Care implemented the medSage system in mid- 2006 for the management of their Obstructive Sleep Apnea patients, and medSage has been a solid partner in the growth of our positive airway pressure (PAP) business ever since. It is obvious that Customer Satisfaction is one of medSage’s primary goals. All calls to medSage are promptly followed-up with personal contact from the medSage staff. Requested and approved changes are implemented in a timely manner, and progress is promptly communicated throughout any transition period.

“Advanced’s patients are very familiar with the automated system and some believe it is a real person, as many have called asking to speak directly to the automated attendant! Obstructive Sleep Apnea patients can be a real challenge to reach. Unlike other homecare patient populations, a lot of these patients work and have very busy lifestyles. medSage allows us to contact these patients on their time schedule----without the overtime or extended hours that would otherwise be necessary. The savings to our organization in man-hours is dramatic.

Clinically, the patients are more compliant with therapy due to asking the questions and addressing the concerns early, and consistently, throughout their therapy. The patients that previously had fallen through the cracks are now identified and helped. Patients often forget that their mask and supplies, as they get old and brittle with the passage of time and use, will start to leak and not provide their prescribed therapy. Patients are now always monitored regardless of how long they have been on service with Advanced Home Care.” Said Cynthia Gray, BS, RRT, RCP Director of Respiratory Development of Advanced Home Care.

Business Information and Marketing Tool
“In addition to improved patient care and significantly increased revenues, the medSage system has provided us with meaningful business information.” Said Ralph McBride, Vice President of HME/RT for Advanced. “The generated management reports have given me objective data that allows me to monitor many meaningful metrics---all the way from the compliance of our various Respiratory Therapists with our OSA patient training standards, to the percentage of patient problems associated with each specific CPAP mask. For the first time, this allows me to make significant operational decisions based upon meaningful objective data.” Said McBride.

“We have also found the medSage program to be an effective marketing tool with our referral sources. We go to each referral source with a report generated on our letterhead for each of their patients that shows the dates of contact, any problems reported, and, if applicable, the problem resolution. It also includes the patient reported hours and days of use of PAP therapy. Today, we tell the referral source about our follow-up program, and ask them to compare it to any of our competitors. It has been a real PLUS for our marketing efforts.” Said Cynthia Gray, BS, RRT, RCP Director of Respiratory Development of Advanced Home Care.

Expansion Into Other Applications
The dramatic success of the medSage system with the OSA patients led Advanced to investigate medSage’s application for the management of patients needing monthly shipments of Respiratory Medications. After reviewing the overall performance metrics of this application with medSage, a decision was made to implement the Respiratory Medication Management Application, and this application went “Live” in late 2006.

“Healthcare professionals will tell you that compliance is an ongoing problem with homecare patients, but medSage has helped us reduce that concern with patients needing aerosol medications. The goal of these monthly calls is two fold:

• to allow us to review patient compliance to therapy
• to allow us to address those noncompliant patients as early as possible so we have an opportunity to modify behavior.

Additionally, medSage has other applications that we are evaluating for use. The medSage system is unique because no other person or company comes between our patient and us. In fact, the patients do not even know we are using medSage to manage the personalized patient management service. In all medSage applications, the provider maintains the direct relationship with their patients. This feature, along with the personalization, is very important to us.” Said Cynthia Gray, BS, RRT, RCP Director of Respiratory Development of Advanced Home Care.

Accreditation
“If any provider has a significant number of patients, patient follow-up programs and processes may be an accreditation issue. By using the medSage system, we are able to reach our patients based upon our clinical guidelines and care plans and obtain meaningful and timely information. We are able to intervene quickly and personally address any problems reported by our patients. The medSage system documents the date of contact, the patients’ responses, and any clinical notes or comments we want to add to the patients’ records in the medSage system. We are able to quickly review the history if there are any questions, or if one desires to audit the process. The medSage system has allowed us to both improve our responsiveness and level of patient care and to reach more of our patients---in direct support of our stated mission.” Said Cynthia Gray, BS, RRT, RCP Director of Respiratory Development of Advanced Home Care.

Conclusion
“In summary, medSage Technologies has provided a system that requires neither a hardware investment nor an on-site software installation. Their one time set-up fee per application is quickly paid back, and our Respiratory Therapists are finally able to focus on providing timely care to those patients most in need of it. While doing this, the additional revenue generated by the timely replenishment of supplies has been dramatic----from patients we already had in our database. And the documented patient management follow-up process and business information reporting have provided new tools to assist with accreditation and fact-based business decision-making. All of this gives Advanced Home Care an opportunity to differentiate ourselves and excel in our ever-challenging homecare marketplace.” Said Cynthia Gray, BS, RRT, RCP Director of Respiratory Development of Advanced Home Care.

Contact Information

For Advanced Home Care
Please contact Cynthia Gray at 800.868.8822 for more information about Advanced Home Care. Cynthia may also be reached by e-mail at cindy.gray@advhomecare.org. The Advanced Home Care website URL is www.advhomecare.org.

For medSage Technologies
Please contact John Durkee at 866.567.8324 Extension 601 for more information about medSage Technologies. John may also be reached by e-mail at jdurkee@medsagetechnologies.com.

The medSageTechnologies website URL is www.medsagetechnologies.com.