Care Management Solutions- 7 Must Have Features

The importance of care management solution is well understood by healthcare professionals; the new US healthcare policies demands US healthcare providers to shift from "fee for service" model to "Value-based care" and care management solutions can play a vital role to achieve value-based contracts.  

While it's important to have a care management solution but it is equally important to verify the effectiveness of care management solution, how can you verify if a care management solution is actually going to help you? 

Below are 7 must have features for any successful care management solution- 

• Transparency- Physicians, care managers, caregivers, and patients are the four players of care management ecosystem; any care management system should be fully transparent for all these players. 

1. A physician should verify that his suggested plan is being implemented or not. 
2. Care manager should verify that his message is well understood and received by Physician and patients. 
3. Caregivers & patients should cross check their care plan. 

• Customized care plan- Care management solution must allow care manager and doctors to create and implement a customized care plan for each patient. Each patient has different health conditions and needs a different plan. For example, two diabetes patients may need different care plan depending on their age bracket, allergies etc.  

• Simple & effective dashboard-  Having an effective & simple dashboard is very important for any care management solution. The dashboard should be simple enough so that all the player of care management process should not need to spend time in understanding it. and Dashboard should be so effective that with a single look user must get all the necessary information. 

  An effective dashboard can help the doctors to see all the care managers to all the patients and associated plan with each of the care manager and patient.  

• Secure communication- Data & information shared with each other should be done in the fully secure communication channel. In short, any care management solution should follow the healthcare compliance such as HIPAA, HL7 etc. 

• Notification- While implementing care management solution, algorithms and mechanism should be defined in way notification should be triggered for every vital health parameter (condition) and other important event and conditions. Notification should be timely and there has to be a mechanism so that recipient must read the notification and other players can verify the read receipt.  

  Notifications can play a vital role in the situation of emergency, suppose a particular health parameter of a patient crosses the safe limit then an automated alert (notification) can save the life of a patient by asking the patient to take necessary action.

• Analytics- Analytics section is important for Doctors and patients to check the effectiveness of care plan over a period of time. Analytics can also play a key role in population health, as doctors can see the effects of various care plans over various people and can get insights that can be useful for other people.
   

• User experience and user interface (UI UX)- User experience and user interface are key to the success of any software and care management solutions are no exceptions. UI & UX (User experience and user interface) of care management software product should be simple enough so that user of all the age groups can understand it and can use it very easily. This factor is more important in the healthcare sector as chances of an elderly person using the software are very high. 

Here it is important to understand that care management solution will not only benefit patients but in long run, these are also beneficial for providers. Anyone who is implementing care management solution may notice a drop in revenue as an immediate effect but in long run, effective care management solutions will definitely increase the revenue of healthcare providers also. So this can win - win situation for all the player of the ecosystem.