Ease of Use Makes Clinicians Happy.
The Challenge
Hospice of Laramie is a non-profit organization located in Laramie, Wyoming. For years, they managed their community and in-patient hospice using a software that wasn’t exactly adequate. The system was not user-friendly. Genevieve Trogden, Clinical Director, said “It lacked any sort of workflow and was non sensical in its layout. If a clinician made any type of error that needed to be corrected, an administrative user would need to resolve the issue for them. It was really burdensome for all of us.” Not only was it time intensive to resolve these things, but it was very difficult to train new clinicians. With several older clinicians, it wasn’t easy for them to learn and use. Additionally, the plan of care had to be updated outside of the visit and so the clinical director was constantly having to remind nurses to create and update the plan of care. And lastly, the support was very arduous. They had one contact person and only their executive director was able to reach out to them. They once had a nurse locked out of the system for four hours and when they finally reached their support person, she was in Italy with no back up!
The Solution
Things changed quickly when Hospice of Laramie lost their executive director unexpectedly. They had to quickly reallocate duties and one of the first things they did was evaluate a different software solution along with hiring a new biller. Between a poorly designed system and a lack of knowledge on the part of their biller, they were losing money and the future looked grim. It was sink or swim! Ms. Trogden played an instrumental role in the vendor evaluation process. When they saw the demo from Curantis Solutions, they immediately fell in love with the care planning functionality, IDG workflow, ease of use, the company and the people behind it.
The Result
With Curantis Solutions, the plan of care is updated every time you chart for the patient. So the administrative staff no longer have to chase down nurses to enter this information. “The state looks at this when they do their evaluation – how we are managing the plan of care and if we’re following it. So we really love this feature.” said Trodgen. Like most Curantis Solutions clients, Hospice of Laramie has also seen a huge time savings around their IDG meeting. They went from mountains of paper, manually organizing, signing and scanning in documents to everything being truly paperless and system automated with IDG workflows that organize the meeting making patient details just a click away with the ability to electronically sign for each patient. Ms Trodgen loves the support she receives and the quick response times from Curantis. She also appreciates being able to submit ideas for software features and read the ideas of other clients. She said, “I like that everything is so transparent and open. I feel like Curantis Solutions is a part of our hospice and we’re a part of it. It’s so interactive and I just love the team there!” One thing she was pleasantly surprised with was when she found herself needing insight around a compliance related matter and was unable to find her answers by reading the state and federal regulations. “I was so impressed to find that Curantis had a compliance person and that she was accessible to me! I was able to get the information I needed and it really took a big weight off to know that we were doing things correctly.” In summary, Trodgen said, “No system is perfect, but overall using Curantis Solutions has been a really positive experience for our staff. I think we made a great choice!”
