With industry challenges such as labor shortages and health inequities threatening to compromise patient safety and exacerbate existing barriers to care, Babyscripts continues to evolve our product to help providers operate at the top of their license and focus on the patient experience.
In a webinar hosted by Babyscripts, members of the executive team were joined by Dr. Tanya Pratt, Medical Director for the Center of Women's Healthcare at Cone Health, a long time partner of Babyscripts, to discuss the new changes within the market, new care guidelines recommended by ACOG, and how remote patient monitoring can aid health systems in absorbing them. We've pulled out some of the highlights below. You can listen to the full conversation here.
New recommendations for blood pressure risk require more continuous monitoring.
Recent data around hypertension complications in pregnancy, specifically on the long term effects on cardiac health of the mother, have motivated new recommendations for blood pressure protocols and increased the urgency to adhere to guidelines already in place, such as the AIM hypertension bundle. For example, clinicians are now advised to maintain a threshold of 140/90 for chronic hypertensive patients, a much more aggressive number than the former 160/90.
Self-measured remote monitoring of blood pressure can facilitate this more rigorous management of at-risk patients without putting extra burden on providers. Babyscripts user data also shows that remote monitoring can increase adherence to ACOG guidelines for frequency of blood pressure capture in the postpartum period.
Shifting trends in OB care call for virtual solutions.
In conjunction with new recommendations out of the University of Michigan and ACOG, many OB departments are rethinking the standard 12-14 in-person prenatal visit schedule and replacing with a hybrid of in-person and virtual visits (about 30% of our webinar attendees surveyed are already implementing a reduced in-person visit schedule enhanced with telemed, with 40% actively exploring reduced visit schedules).
Known as PATH (Plan for Appropriate Tailored Healthcare in Pregnancy), the guidelines offer a new way to provide prenatal care that is more efficient and speaks to the desires of patients who would prefer to come into the office less because of missing work, finding childcare, struggling with transportation, and any number of other obligations or challenges. Patients overwhelmingly prefer a combination of in-person and virtual visit schedules.
Industry challenges are driving innovation.
The difficulty of maintaining a stable workforce over the past couple of years has put pressure on hospitals and care teams. While health systems deal with critical staffing shortages, they're also reporting losses as expenses and labor costs go up and consumer-oriented digital companies siphon patients. Ninety-four percent of health systems reported stopping patient leakage as a priority in 2022. To stay competitive in the current landscape, health systems need to prioritize efficiency without compromising the patient experience.
Where does Babyscripts come in?
Babyscripts is helping our users meet the needs of the current landscape by giving providers more time to focus on patients, and giving patients and providers peace of mind in their care.
We've put time and expertise into creating campaigns that address current needs or touch on topical issues (e.g., FAQs around the formula shortage, spotlights for Breastfeeding Week and Maternal Mental Health Week), to keep patients engaged with the resources in the app and enhance their experience.
We overhauled our patient health-risk assessments, increasing the frequency of deployment while scaling back the length of each assessment, for a more patient-friendly experience resulting in better engagement.
For providers, we've focused on efficiencies. We've introduced automated offboarding, which routinely cleanses old and duplicate accounts from patient lists, providing a clean and accurate patient dashboard.
Our new product functionality puts all the info from our robust trigger escalation process into one dashboard for ease of access for providers, including information from our 24/7 call center log. With the new trigger management screen, providers can see an audit history alongside patient data: who was called, when the calls were placed, notes, etc.
Improved workflow through integration
For integrated Epic customers like Cone Health, these trigger alerts now show up directly in In-Basket, streamlining the provider workflow by automatically linking the escalation events or non-adherence triggers to a patient's MRN, and giving provider's immediate access to the their follow-up protocol (messaging, phone call, et al.).
Cone Health was an early adopter of the solution, initially using Babyscripts exclusively for low-risk patients. They currently deploy the full range of the Babyscripts solution to all patients (including maternal digital education and remote monitoring for antepartum and postpartum), and are fully integrated and order through Epic, with all data integrating back into Epic.
"Patients at Cone Health are extremely happy with the experience of RPM since integration. Patients feel secure, providers have more time because everything is linked. You can monitor after hours and on the weekend when staff who might otherwise be monitoring during the week aren’t there. Patients know that we have their data. Anything that’s really urgent will be brought to us, which gives us and the patients peace of mind." - Dr. Tanya Pratt
Leadership hires to better serve patients.
CEO Anish Sebastian closed out the discussion with an update on Babyscripts' recent hires, including Shelle' Jones, EVP of Revenue, who is leading up the revenue and growth side of the house; Linda Elam, former president of Amerigroup, who comes to the Babyscripts board with a background in managed Medicaid and healthcare policy; and Sheila Schweitzer, who has built and exited several companies in her successful and admirable career as CEO. This increase in female leadership is the latest step in Babyscripts' continued mission to better understand and serve the needs of our diverse client and patient base.
Follow the link to listen to the full webinar and Q&A session.
Submit a comment