InTouch Health qualified by the Ontario Telemedicine Network to offer patient engagement solution for surgery
InTouch Health partners with TapCloud and SafeStart to provide innovative solutions to reduce costly readmissions in new provincial bundled care model
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., March 6, 2018 /CNW/ -- InTouch Health, the leading enterprise telehealth platform, announced today it has been qualified by the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) as a Vendor of Record to offer a surgical patient management solution to the more than 220 hospitals in the province's 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs). With more than 600,000 surgeries taking place each year in Ontario1, hospitals often face the challenge of canceled surgeries, following complex processes to ensure patient safety, and managing patients to avoid costly readmissions.
InTouch Health's surgical patient management solution, InTouch Surgical, brings together expertise in safety protocols and symptom management to deliver workflow apps that follow patients from the time of enrollment into the surgical suite, to post-operative discharge through to recovery at home. InTouch Surgical enables doctors and staff to virtually monitor and take care of patients with real-time symptom data and enhanced safety protocols, allowing for continuity of care and quality outcomes.
"We are honored to have been selected by the renowned Ontario Telemedicine Network to serve the provincial hospitals in their mission to provide the highest quality of patient care while reducing overall costs," said Joseph M. DeVivo, chief executive officer at InTouch Health. "Our work, combined with that of TapCloud and SafeStart, virtually connects the surgery patient and care team from the initial office visit all the way through to recovery. This ensures continuity of care leading to reductions in errors and cancelled surgeries as well as costly hospital readmissions while patients recover comfortably at home."
OTN, a global leader in telemedicine and connected care, is a not-for-profit organization funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. OTN is responsible for building a sustainable and responsive virtual care system that aims to reduce hospital readmissions, transform primary care, and expand home and community care across Ontario.
"The innovative solutions available through companies such as InTouch Health offer benefits to clinicians and patients within any healthcare ecosystem," said Dr. Edward M. Brown, Chief Executive Officer, OTN. "These tools support patient engagement and more standardized, safer care. The end result should be a higher number of patients receiving the highest quality of care across the continuum and across our province."
Clinicians often find it challenging to know which patients are experiencing problems before and after surgery. Moreover, patients aren't involved in the safety process. InTouch Surgical addresses these issues by providing clinicians with critical patient information in real time. Since patient symptoms are often the best indicator of emerging issues, InTouch Surgical uses leading symptom collection technology with continuous patient involvement, a safety alert system, and triple vetted patient records to minimize safety issues, which delay surgeries and lead to readmissions.
About InTouch Health
InTouch Health, the 2018 Best in KLAS Category Leader for Virtual Care Platforms, provides its world class, 24/7 monitored InTouch Telehealth Network, comprised of regulated telehealth systems, clinical workflow solutions and software, and managed services to hospitals and healthcare systems for the delivery of clinical care, anytime, anywhere. Today, InTouch Health supports more than 130 healthcare systems, 7,700 registered network users and 1,780 care locations around the world as they deploy telehealth programs across their enterprises. InTouch Health has surpassed 1.68 million network sessions, which includes 940,000 telehealth virtual care sessions over the InTouch Telehealth Network, and is forecasted to manage more than 300,000 clinical sessions in 2018. To learn more about InTouch Health's work with OTN, please visit: www.intouchsurgical.ca.
About SafeStart
SafeStart is a patient engagement surgical safety solution created by a surgeon with a passion for safety. It eliminates Never Events of wrong patient, wrong procedure, and wrong site operations by providing accurate clinical information triple vetted by nurses, surgeons, and patients. SafeStart uses mobile, cloud-based HIPAA compliant technology to create a patient safety record complete with surgeon annotated clinical photos, allergies, medications, x-rays, and consent forms. SafeStart eliminates Never Events and provides enhanced patient safety information that prevents delays and cancellations in the operating room allowing better surgical schedule stability, throughput, and efficiency. SafeStart includes patients and their families in the safety process and provides the best validated healthcare information thereby re-assuring them at a time of great family stress. SafeStart gives clinicians and facilities new surgical safety metrics allowing reduction of overall surgical risk. For more information, please visit: www.safestartmedical.com.
About TapCloud
TapCloud helps patients and their doctors communicate crucial information in order to achieve better health outcomes - reducing readmissions, managing utilization, and improving patient satisfaction. TapCloud's proprietary platform combines mobile technology and personalized services that help patients and their doctors manage chronic conditions, assess treatment or medication effectiveness, and improve at-home recovery after an invasive surgery. The platform spans over 100 different health conditions including, oncology, cardiology, orthopedic surgery, and behavioral health. TapCloud is privately held, and is based in Northbrook, Illinois. For additional information, contact [email protected] or call (847) 239-7224.
1 Health Quality Ontario, 2016/17.
SOURCE InTouch Health
Corporate Contact: Rachel Gonzalez, Marketing Manager, InTouch Health, [email protected], (805) 562-8686; Media Contact: Taelor Duckworth, Account Supervisor, Edelman, [email protected], (903) 818-2216, https://www.intouchhealth.com/
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