Kno2 and VITAS Healthcare Enable Secure Electronic Patient Referrals to Hospice Facilities

06/22/2017

Kno2™, the company that optimizes patient document exchange for everyone in healthcare, and VITAS Healthcare, the nation’s leading provider of end-of-life care, today announced a partnership agreement to streamline electronic patient referrals from hospitals and health systems to hospice facilities, driving higher patient satisfaction, improved hospital CAHPS^® (HCAHPS) scores and lower hospital costs.

Kno2’s interoperability platform provides ever-expanding connectivity to major health information networks and platforms, aggregating and centralizing critical workflows, such as referral management, into a single solution. VITAS integrates the platform into its proprietary electronic health record (EHR) system to support centralized, seamless and secure sharing of patient data to start the rapid referral process, regardless of its origination. This capability enables healthcare organizations to minimize the time that hospice-appropriate patients spend in the hospital, and eliminates the labor-intensive efforts wasted on sending and managing paper faxes, ultimately mitigating the ever-increasing costs of care delivery. 

Delivering Comfort to Patients & Families

“Our goal is to innovate and accelerate how care is transitioned from hospitals to hospice care,” said Patrick Hale, chief information officer of VITAS. “The partnership with Kno2 will enable our hospice team to work quickly and more efficiently, giving them more time to provide comfort and increasing quality of life for VITAS patients and their families.”

Hospitals typically send referrals to several hospice organizations simultaneously, through diverse methods, to provide patients and their families with a variety of choices that best meet their needs. Through this partnership, VITAS receives all referrals electronically through Kno2’s integrated platform, and is able to dispatch an admission coordinator to the patient’s bedside within minutes, even during nights, weekends and holidays. The accelerated response time facilitates efficient care transitions, helps reduce hospital lengths of stay and improves HCAHPS scores—all while delivering much-needed comfort and relief to hospice patients and their families.

Yale New Haven Hospital has leveraged VITAS’ integrated solution to expedite patient transitions to end-of-life care. Hospice-appropriate patients are identified within the hospital’s EHR and referred directly to VITAS. Admission coordinators are notified via their mobile devices and respond immediately.

“Once a decision has been made to refer a patient to hospice, it’s important to act quickly,” said Jon Elwell, CEO of Kno2. “Any delays in communication are unacceptable in what is already a very difficult time for patients and their families. The partnership between Kno2 and VITAS resolves the demand for high-speed, secure patient data exchange, driving optimal care coordination. We are proud to be working with the leader in hospice care to meet the needs of patients and providers alike—throughout the care continuum.”