The Toledo, Ohio-based ProMedica Health System, which topped Modern Healthcare Magazine’s 2006 list of the nation’s top integrated health systems, has chosen ECIN to automate case management at its nine hospitals.

ECIN’s ExtendedCare ProfessionalTM software streamlines the daily case management functions of discharge planning and utilization management into a single work list, empowering case managers to decrease denials and avoidable days and optimize length of stay, while increasing throughput, staff efficiency, quality and patient satisfaction.

“Case Managers at ProMedica play an increasingly larger role in helping drive better clinical, financial and patient satisfaction outcomes,” said Gladeen Roberts, President. “It makes sense to give them the market’s most powerful and case management-specific tools available and ECIN’s unique offering integrating utilization management and discharge planning across many facilities is just that.”

ProMedica case managers will be able to communicate automatically with payers and post-acute care providers, eliminating hours wasted daily phoning and faxing and drastically reducing the amount of paper-based documentation they currently must generate.

Hospital case management places one person in charge of coordinating all phases of patient care, from admission through discharge, and has two fundamental tasks: Utilization Management– the process of securing payer authorization – and Discharge Planning, planning patient discharge and securing any necessary post-acute care options.

Integrating both applications into a single solution has proven to provide a series of benefits to hospitals across the country:Boosted productivity due to single database/consolidated work-list. Not having to jump between discharge planning and utilization management systems — nor waste hours re-keying data – has saved existing ECIN clients several hours every day.Reduced denials and excess days via automated payer communication. Delivering patient data via secure Web communication proves information delivery and eliminates the very common “Lack of Information Denial”(LOI) payers often cite when data is relayed via phone or fax.Increased patient focus by virtually eliminating faxes and phone calls. Less clerical time with phones and fax machines means more clinical time for patients.Better management reporting when “patient lives in ECIN.” Case management- captured data can be converted into actionable business intelligence when captured and processed via the ECIN system.Higher patient satisfaction. Reaching out electronically to dozens of post-acute care facilities at one time greatly expands the choices presented to patients and families.

ECIN’s industry-defining discharge planning solution is used by more than 340 hospitals nationwide. Automating post-acute facility referrals eliminates the cumbersome and costly process that has a case manager or discharge planner wasting hours every week phoning and faxing to secure post-acute care services one provider at a time. Instead, the ExtendedCare ProfessionalTM application sends a detailed electronic referral across ECIN’s proprietary database of 86,000 providers and interested facilities reply – often within minutes. The patient and family then receive a discharge packet that details their facility options, making that decision process more transparent and informed. That packet’s breadth of options and depth of information on each provider allows patients and families to make an extended care facility choice that precisely meets their needs. Physicians and families still control the discharge process, but have exponentially more information in a fraction of the time.

About ECIN 

ECIN’s web-based case management software and consulting enables hospitals to fully automate and streamline the entire care management process – from admission to discharge. Unifying discharge planning and utilization management applications into a single integrated solution allows case managers to work from a single screen to decrease denials and avoidable days and optimize length of stay, while increasing throughput, staff efficiency, quality and patient satisfaction. ECIN’s automated data capture also allows case management departments to better document and measure key quality and performance indicators to drive process improvement efforts. Founded be healthcare professionals, ECIN’s product and services are utilized by over 320 hospitals and 4,000 post-acute care providers. For more information, please visit www.extendedcare.com. ECIN is based in Chicago, Illinois.