Technology

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Comment by George Richardson on December 9, 2011 at 4:41pm

We have small group of specialsts with phones and weekend and evening nurses with air cards.  We are piloting some regular phones, but the cost of voice and data plans for all clinicians could be prohibitive unless there are productivity gains.  So we do not have a mobile device solution yet.  Okay it is Friday afternoon on the east coast and my head hurts time to slide into the weekend.

 

p.s. I just read an interesting article on securing mobile devices.  I'll try to find it again and send out the link.

Comment by Jeff Minnerly on December 9, 2011 at 4:16pm

We are utilizing Citrix XenServer for our virtualization and we are about 60% virtualized, i would guess.  Yes, HCHB does allow for the larger tablets to be used now.  Pretty nice actually.  Currently, our POC is the Wizard by August Systems.  We got it about 7 yrs ago when we were about half the size and only one location.  Seemed to work good then but we are really struggling with it now and are anxious to get off of that platform.  One other question - what about Mobile devices?  Do you supply phones to your field clinicians or not?  Smart phones? AirCards? We supply phones (not smart phones, yet) to our clinicians, but many are starting to figure that they can be more efficient with their own smart phone.  Email, internet access, etc.  Do you have a mobile device management solution?  I'm currently looking - have looked at MobileIron and Airwatch.

Comment by George Richardson on December 9, 2011 at 3:59pm

We are about 90% virtualized internally. VMWare.  Not any cloud applications yet, although we will be moving to Hosted Payroll solution next year.  We have looked at both your finalists in the last year  IS and Finance liked Healthwyse, Clinical not so much.  HomeCare Homebase only had the hand held solution at the time, which we were not enamored with.  My understanding is that they have now released their Droid App, so maybe it'll run on the larger screen tablets.  We have been on POC for over 15 years and yes it is Delta, current flavor Encore we are hoping the new POC offer hits the mark.  Although Clinicians here favored current platform over some of the others we looked at, but is that because one was better than the other or different that what they were used to, hmmm?

Comment by Jeff Minnerly on December 9, 2011 at 3:42pm

Amen to the chief cook and bottle washing - have done my fair share of both!! Curious about which point of care software you use (and yes, I realize this is a DeltaHealth sponsored site), are you looking at or utilizing cloud technology and/or virtualizing your environment.  We are currently doing virutalization and are in the ardous process of selecting a point of care solution.  We have narrowed down to HomeCare Homebase and HealthWyse - yes we did look at DeltaHealth, and while it was good and we liked the company, the other two fit our needs a little better.  We'll be making site visits in January and deciding after that.

Comment by George Richardson on December 9, 2011 at 3:35pm

My title is CIO which basically means chief cook and bottle washer :-).  Let me know what your questions are.  I do know there are other IT/IS heads on the forum, and some of the vendors may have insight on your questions also.

Comment by Jeff Minnerly on December 9, 2011 at 3:31pm

George - I'm the IT Director here at FHC, what's your position?  I would love to hear what you are doing on a couple issues, if you are on the IT side of things.

Comment by Keith Crownover on December 9, 2011 at 3:28pm

It seems like those of us who have responded today are all vendors but the group members are certainly not all vendors!  Maybe Friday afternoons are slower for vendors ;-)  Nevertheless, my initial response stands.  I invented many of my friends and customers in the industry to join.  I know that others have been kicked off for overt marketing so that is not permissible in this forum.  Let's see if we can get other, non-vendor members to join!

Comment by George Richardson on December 9, 2011 at 3:28pm

There are a couple of vendors in this current response chain.  I have been monitoring but have not chimed in yet.  We have over 600 employees in 6 locations plus 3 hospice residences here in Central and Eastern MA

Comment by Josh Keely on December 9, 2011 at 3:27pm

I am....not sure of everyone else.
I'm the product manager for AppointMate (www.appointmate.com). It's a Private Duty software solution (scheduling, billing, payroll, telephony, etc.).

Spokane?!? I used to live in Spokane...grew up in "The Valley"...moved out to GA in 2000.

Good to meet you!

Josh

Comment by Jeff Minnerly on December 9, 2011 at 3:22pm

Just curious are you all Vendors or are you working for homecare agencies?  If you're working for agencies what size are you and what business lines do you offer?  Here at Family Home Care in Spokane, WA we offer, home health, hospice and private duty care and have about 450 employees in 3 different locations.  Glad to see some activity!

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