In a field crowded with patient engagement apps, Babyscripts’ integration-first approach sets it apart from the competition. Unlike most patient engagement apps, which typically do not integrate with the medical record, Babyscripts’ tech stack allows the program to integrate into an organization’s EMR, making it flexible to our customers’ needs.
We’ve compiled a list of FAQs to help our clients understand the importance of integration, and why we’ve made it an essential part of our strategy.
Why integrate?
Let’s start with the primary value-add — integration workflows replace time-costly manual workflows.
Imagine doing away with the tedious process of manually registering patients, one by one, via a web form. At one site, a team of staff members recruited nearly 3000 patients in a single quarter — manually. If an average staff member takes 2 minutes to complete a single recruitment, that’s about 100 hours that could have been saved through an integrated onboarding with the EMR.
How does integration with Babyscripts work?
Babyscripts integrates through multiple methods, all of which aim at easing the user’s burden in ongoing maintenance and operations. We focus our integration efforts on workflows that help us do more with less.
Onboarding is the most common type of integration that our customers use. This integration converts the manual patient registration workflow to a more automated one within the customer’s EMR. For example, at our customers’ Epic sites, providers automatically order Babyscripts at the new OB encounter — directly in their protocol order sets.
Many of our customers have also benefited from embedding patient biometrics sent from Babyscripts within their EMR, where providers can view that information in tandem with the rest of the clinical data they need to make the best clinical decisions for the patient.
While we like to focus our integration descriptions on the net result — the product and the workflow — we understand that our customers want to know how each is done.
Currently, we integrate via HL7 as our primary method. However, work is always in progress on the next capability so that we can apply these workflow advantages to all of our customers. Babyscripts has partnerships with Redox and Xealth to simplify the ordering and deployment process for our health systems clients, including Banner Health and Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, among others. Work is being done to refresh and optimize our AthenaNet integration, and to support patient and provider single sign-on to our platform.
How does integration affect workflow?
Through automation, integration makes workflows easier and faster, and it also enables the provider to see all a patient's information in one place, rather than toggling back and forth between systems.
It is much faster to enroll a patient in a program like Babyscripts if there’s no need to leave the EMR — an imperative for nurses and providers who are already burdened by short appointment windows.
From a provider standpoint, integration is essential to getting buy-in for a solution from the rest of the care team — administrators, nurses, front desk, et al. In an already busy environment, efficiency is essential. The EMR is the standard for documenting and delivering care — for Babyscripts or any solution to be plug-and-play, integration into the EMR is a necessary step.
Why Babyscripts? Why not opt for an in-house solution that utilizes the EMR?
The short answer? Babyscripts is less expensive, more effective, and built to scale — and has six years of collateral and clinical research behind it.
Unlike a homegrown digital solution, Babyscripts has exclusive license to protocols that allow the company to make categorical claims in the market around efficacy and outcomes, and it’s been validated through peer-reviewed research.
Babyscripts has a wealth of IP in remote patient monitoring — how to maintain compliance, for example — and in detecting and triaging abnormal data points to reduce false positives and elevate real problems.
While some health systems might invest in specific component parts of what Babyscripts typically offers (a mobile app or integrating data points from IOT devices back to the record), the real challenge lies in scaling programs and offering the right protocol at the point of care to generate actual ROI.
Babyscripts is the expert in remote obstetrical care, and with five years of collateral, assets, and best practices, is fully built to scale — making it significantly cheaper than a health system trying to build and maintain their own program.
[Read Babyscripts vs. Epic: A Competitive Analysis]
What are the requirements for integration?
All that’s needed to get started with integration is a desire to do it — and an IT project manager who can request resources. Reach out today to your account representative to talk integration!
CUSTOMER STORY
At Advocate Aurora Health, as with all of our health systems, Babyscripts followed an integration-first approach, offering an EMR and deep tech stack integration as the preferred method for deploying the Babyscripts program.
Understanding that automation and avoiding a “death by a thousand clicks” approach for provider training and implementation is key to a successful deployment, Babyscripts automatically enrolls patients at the point of care once encounters are finished and enrolls patients on to different modules through “orders,” similar to the manner in which diagnostics are prescribed.
On their end, Advocate Aurora takes steps to ensure a smooth transition for all of the providers in their system. To avoid the potential pitfalls of a system-wide go live, Advocate Aurora took a phased approach to implementation. They’ve also streamlined their provider-generated content to ease the burden on individual hospitals: with customized content pre-written and updated by one Advocate Aurora team, the only responsibility falling to the individual hospital is inputting location-specific information.
Advocate Aurora also recognizes that Babyscripts isn’t just a tool for obstetricians. By incorporating other stakeholders into the Babyscripts solution, Advocate Aurora taps into the full potential of the platform and encourages a system-wide championship of the innovation.
Advocate Aurora has leveraged the platform to match the needs of many divisions; including the pharmacy and the marketing department, making the platform a one-stop shop for the patient for everything from prenatal vitamins to birthing classes.
Babyscripts’ Impact at Advocate Aurora This Year
In 2021, Advocate Aurora has deployed the Babyscripts platform to an average of 650 patients per month across nine practices. More than 1340 blood pressure data points were logged by patients on the remote monitoring program in the first 3 months of this year, with 31 high BP events in January alone. Along with strong enrollment and engagement with Babyscripts technology, overall patient satisfaction remains consistently high with more patients providing feedback every month. Here are some of the things we’ve heard from our Babyscripts’ moms at Advocate Aurora:
“The amount of basic check up appointments that I was able to cut out saves time and money since we live an hour away from the hospital.”
“It's easy and important, all I have to do is enter the data in my phone.”
“Especially now during the pandemic, I like the less frequent office visits. During the school year it was nice because I can't just leave work in the middle of the day. Thank you!”
“I like feeling connected between visits.”
Interested in hearing more about integration or implementing it at your practice? Contact your account representative.