Danielle Maroon
Feb 29 2024
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Real-time communication is important for home-based care providers.
It plays a vital role in enhancing the quality of care, improving patient outcomes and meeting the evolving needs of home-based care providers, patients and family caregivers. Advancements in technology, changes in healthcare delivery models, and shifts in patient preferences have all influenced the evolution of communication, leading to more personalized care delivery, more engaged patients and better outcomes.
Today, CitusHealth continues to evolve its technology to meet consumer needs by adding features that make interdisciplinary communication faster and collaborating with patients and caregivers easier.
Let’s take a look at some new CitusHealth features that can streamline your communication processes.
Easily connect with a patient’s alternate contacts
Most patients have alternate contacts who are authorized on their behalf to help with care coordination—for example, a spouse or an adult child. Staff and alternate contacts can engage in a chat designed to be HIPAA-secure without the need to for them to download and enroll in the app.
This new functionality helps open up the lines of communication for any scenario, such as looking for a medication list or scheduling an appointment. Because it can be hard to coordinate schedules or connect with someone via phone, app-less messaging lets people respond at their convenience.
Notify users on a message thread with @user mentions
While detailed and ongoing communication between staff members is important, the sheer volume of messages can make it hard for users to tell which messages need their immediate attention. Now, staff can use the @ symbol before a user’s name to call out a specific individual in a chat thread. If multiple staff members are in Patient Discussion Groups (PDGs), this feature helps clearly identify who needs to address any questions, whether you’re composing a new message or replying in an existing thread.
One common use case for this feature is when you have a new referral that’s missing information, and you need the benefits investigation team to capture more details. You can request the specific information you need and then tag an individual so everyone is aware what needs to be done and who will take action. You can also prioritize these tags using an identifier in the message thread that lets users quickly see what needs immediate attention without reading through the entire thread.
Start a chat with fewer clicks
Whether you’re in CitusHealth’s Message Center, Form Center or Document Center, you can use the “start chat” button from any window. This means that if a user needs help with a form, they can start a chat instantly without needing to close out the document or page, saving time and helping users work more efficiently.
Quickly identify unread messages
Because message threads often include many users over extended time periods, it’s important that unread messages be identified quickly and easily. In CitusHealth, unread messages are featured in a bold font, so you can immediately see the newest information. The message count notification also reflects new, unread messages. For staff who use the message center frequently, this update can help them work more efficiently.
Archive users by role
Patient Discussion Groups (PDGs) can include a variety of care team members, from clinical to administrative roles. Staff are added and removed from the chat group as the patient moves through their care journey, including the relevant individuals at any given time. For example, if you want to remove all pharmacists from the group, you can do so by removing all users with the role of ‘pharmacist’ instead of individually selecting each pharmacist’s name.
This feature is especially beneficial in larger organizations with many employees and contracted employees and will keep users from being inundated by messages that are no longer relevant to them.
These are just a few features that help streamline communication for your staff and boost operational efficiency. Request a demo today to see how CitusHealth’s messaging features can streamline workflows and enhance efficiency.
