The Importance of Care Coordination

Care coordination plays a crucial role in health care. Optimizing it can promote better health care outcomes and an enhanced patient experience. Your patients can appreciate more comprehensive and seamless services and become more active in their own health and wellness. Here's how you can optimize care coordination to enhance your facility's care quality, efficiency and effectiveness.

What Is Care Coordination?

Care coordination refers to organizing and facilitating health care services to deliver seamless care. By promoting collaboration among different health care professionals, care coordination ensures your patient's needs are met successfully. Care coordination can help providers integrate services across different settings, such as primary care, hospitals or rehabilitation centers. 

It typically involves the following components:

• Communication: Communication among health care providers is crucial for proper care coordination. Providers should share relevant patient information, treatment plans and care updates to ensure all involved are well-informed and working together. 
• Information sharing: Care coordination requires exchanging patient information across different health care settings and providers. Patient information could include medical records, medication lists, treatment plans and test results, ensuring continuity of care.
• Continuity of care: The organization of care also focuses on smooth transitions between different settings, such as from hospital to home care. Continuing care can prevent gaps in services, reduce the risk of medical errors and promote ongoing support and follow-up for your patients. 
• Patient engagement: Care coordination ensures patients are actively involved in their care and empowered to make decisions on treatment options, care planning and management. 

Care coordination is especially beneficial for patients with complex health care needs, chronic conditions or those who require services from multiple providers. It streamlines the care process and aims for a more patient-centered approach.

How Care Coordination Can Help Your Facility 

Care coordination can bring numerous benefits to your health care facility, improving care delivery. Here's how it can help your center: 

1. Enhanced Communication

Care coordination promotes more streamlined communication among all health care providers in your facility. It ensures patient information is shared fast and accurately, promoting informed decision-making and reducing errors and miscommunication.

2. Improved Patient Outcomes

Care coordination can optimize patient outcomes by collaborating across different providers and settings. It ensures your patients receive appropriate and quick interventions, follow-up and necessary support services — all of which can lead to better health outcomes and improved patient satisfaction.

3. Reduced Health Care Costs

Effective care coordination can also contribute to significant cost savings. It can minimize redundant or unnecessary procedures, tests or hospital readmissions. Streamlining your care process can eliminate inefficiencies and promote cost-effective use of your resources. 

4. Increased Patient Satisfaction

Care coordination can enhance the patient experience by ensuring a smooth, coordinated care journey. Patients will benefit from a seamless transition, reduced wait times and improved access to vital services and support. In turn, care coordination can lead to higher patient satisfaction and engagement. 

5. Improved Collaboration

Care coordination promotes collaboration and teamwork across the health care providers within your center. You can expect better decision-making among everyone, interdisciplinary consultations and joint care planning. A collaborative approach can ensure better care and promote more cohesive patient services. 

6. Prevention and Early Intervention

Care coordination also facilitates practice and preventive care strategies. You'll track and manage patient populations, identify risk factors and implement early intervention plans. That way, your facility can effectively address health care issues before they escalate, promoting better health outcomes. 

7. Regulatory Compliance

Care coordination helps your center comply with regulatory requirements and guidelines. It ensures you follow health care standards and deliver services that align with quality improvement initiatives, patient safety protocols and care transition standards mandated by regulatory bodies. 

Best Practices for Care Coordination

Here are some care coordination best practices to implement in your facility: 

• Target high-risk, high-need patients: Focusing on clinically high-risk patients can significantly improve health outcomes and lower costs. These patients require at least a 90-day follow-up — beyond the standard four to six weeks — to ensure they are fully educated and engaged in their care. 
• Utilize multi-disciplinary teams: Most patients face psychosocial and economic barriers to maintaining their health. Care teams should include social workers or other professionals with the skills necessary to address these barriers. 
• Provide timely admission information: Patients are especially vulnerable after discharge. Ideally, you provide follow-up within 24 to 48 hours that includes details about admission and a foundation for a transitional care plan. 
• Ensure proper follow-up: A follow-up care plan can help patients transition from hospital to home or community and reduce readmissions, which can vastly improve your facility's finances and patient outcomes. The plan should be in place for at least four to six weeks, ensuring that your patients understand discharge instructions, recognize symptoms that could require immediate attention and participate in follow-up appointments.
• Promote patient education and engagement: Patients with chronic conditions must actively engage in their health, and transition plans should seek ways to educate and empower them to do so. Your team should identify potential barriers affecting the patient's ability to fully engage and coordinate services.

How Can Medrina Help Your Facility?

Medrina is a physician-owned practice of physiatrists with the primary goal of improving patient outcomes in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) like yours. We can improve collaboration across your center to ensure patients receive the proper care and support they need. Our team is specialized in rehabilitation, providing the following services: 

• Diagnose and treat patients with physical, functionally limiting or painful conditions.
• Provide patient-centered care focused on independence and mobility.
• Improve your center's key quality outcomes.
• Improve internal revenue sources.

Our care coordination for SNFs starts post-discharge and ensures your patients receive the best care possible. The centers we've worked with have seen up to a 35% reduction in preventable readmissions. 

Choose Medrina

Care coordination is crucial for your patients and center. When you're ready to promote a collaborative atmosphere and enhance the patient experience at your skilled nursing facility, choose Medrina. By working closely with your facility's staff and interdisciplinary teams, our qualified professionals can streamline communication, facilitate smooth care transitions and optimize patient outcomes. 

Contact us today to elevate care coordination in your skilled nursing facility and improve the well-being of your residents.