Building a Collaborative Tech Ecosystem for Hospice Care

Building a Collaborative Tech Ecosystem for Hospice Care

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Dennis Gill: Welcome to CareSmartz360 On Air, a Home Care Podcast. I’m Dennis Gill, Senior Sales Consultant at Caresmartz.

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Dennis Gill: Today, we are honored to host James Lezzer, Vice President of interoperability at IntellaTriage, the nation’s go to nurse, based triage, provider delivering seamless care. 24/7, 365 days a year. With the largest network of licensed nurses on deck

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Dennis Gill: IntellaTriage not only eases field burnout, but supercharges patient outcomes through cutting edge tech and custom workflows.

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Dennis Gill: James is our resident relationship alchemist. Ask him his superpower, and he’ll tell you it’s forging trust faster than you can say “API integration”.

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Dennis Gill: His knack for tackling thorny challenges, getting his hands delightfully dirty in mental calculus and navigating rocky waters makes him the perfect guide to today’s topic; how to build a collaborative tech ecosystem for hospice care.

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Dennis Gill: We’ll unpack the nuts and bolts of interoperability, discover how to weave together EMRs, telehealth platforms and triage systems, and hear real world stories of hospice teams thriving through teamwork and tech. James believes improving both nurse satisfaction and patient experience isn’t just possible. It’s imperative.

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Dennis Gill: Let’s dive in and learn how to connect the dots for compassionate, tech powered hospice care. James, welcome aboard!

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James Lezzer: Thank you, Dennis. It’s a pleasure to be here.

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Dennis Gill: We are really thankful you took out the time for our listeners today for this very important session that we have so not wasting much of the time just straight away. Jump on to our 1st question that we have for you today.

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Dennis Gill: Jim, how do you define a collaborative tech ecosystem in the context of hospice care? And what core components must it include.

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James Lezzer: So I think for a lot of people that’s a challenge that everybody is really trying to solve. For in the hospice care industry, you know fundamentally what you have at the core of every organization is going to need a good Emr that’s going to capture

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James Lezzer: the patient documentation, the clinical documentation. It’s got all of the care, coordination plans, everything that you need to care for patients and deliver the best outcome that you can for them and for their caregivers. When you look at the other core competencies and things that need to wrap around that

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James Lezzer: the technology needs to be both

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James Lezzer: very, very easy to use, and from a caregiver facing component as well as have the ability to flip, to be patient facing, or you know, the external caregivers, the patients that you’re caring for.

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James Lezzer: and I think that there’s a lot of different tech that’s out there. So you’ll look at things like the Emr as the core. But then you start to see patient communication tools, patient engagement tools, breaking those barriers down, so it makes it easier for patients to communicate with their caregivers

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James Lezzer: when they’re in that moment that they need that care, and then have that data and all those interactions flow right back to the Emr. So you have one book of record for all knowledge that’s being captured about that patient, and all encounters that are occurring.

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Dennis Gill: Oh, okay, perfect. Good to know about that. And how do you see emerging technologies, including AI, specifically reshaping hospice care in terms of patient outcomes and operational efficiencies.

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James Lezzer: Sure AI is. This was a huge buzzword towards the end of last year, and I think it’s even more of a buzzword. Now I think there’s a lot of different opportunities in the market.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah, she.

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James Lezzer: Everything from ambient technology that’s listening to those encounters and transcribing them and getting those things documented to tools that are actually able to look at the patient record and the codes that have been put together for billing, to make sure that that all reconciles and makes sense.

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James Lezzer: I think what we’re gonna see over the course of the next few years when it comes to AI is kind of a settling down of things to where people say, I use these tools for the ambient component. These are helpful in documenting what’s going on or capturing the post. Encounter notes and description of what happened for the nurse making that easier for them and for the other caregivers.

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James Lezzer: I think you’re also going to see a lot of a lot of effort on the revenue cycle side, where there’ll be somewhat of a consolidation of the players that are in the market there, where people are doing a great job from looking at referral to care, plan to billing and making sure that all that maps together correctly, and that there are, if there are any gaps, they can be reviewed and addressed prior to submission of any claims or things like that.

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James Lezzer: Some of the other areas that AI is really interesting is when you start looking at the patient engagement components. I think there’s some plays there. The hard part for Hospice with AI is that

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James Lezzer: AI still feels a little bit artificial when you have things like robots calling or reaching out, there’s there’s just a latency that humans can’t

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James Lezzer: deliver, that you don’t get from AI just yet.

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James Lezzer: And I think the other component is that’s that’s really hard to teach and very hard for a language. Large language model learn is the concept of empathy, and being very present in that conversation, especially when you’re having

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James Lezzer: tough conversations around things like changes of condition for the patient, especially on Hospice care at the end stages. There! It’s a sensitive conversation that a live person does just differently and does candidly better than AI can do today. I think you’re gonna see that become better and better over time, though.

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Dennis Gill: But yes, definitely, that thing empathy would be missing. But yes, we can imagine that things might be added more in the air side.

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Dennis Gill: Okay, so, and how can tech innovations be seamlessly integrated with traditional Hospice practices without compromising the compassionate care model? According to you.

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James Lezzer: So excuse me, I. The barrier still is largely there of getting data from point A to Point B, and the amount of data that needs to be moved

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James Lezzer: between different tech platforms is really challenging. What you’ll see is everybody can do it. Adt feeds. That’s easy, and some of the other things are pretty easy.

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James Lezzer: But when you look at now getting the more holistic picture of what’s going on with this patient.

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James Lezzer: where did they come from? How did they get here? What do I need to know and analyze in order to be able to provide the best outcome with my technology? And what my technology is doing. I think that’s probably one of the biggest barriers or challenges that we have today. I think that’s gonna break down over time as you look at solutions like No. 2, and health guerrilla and other connectors. That is helping to kind of bridge some of those gaps.

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Dennis Gill: Okay, okay, okay. And with all evolving regulations, what are the unique compliance challenges for host care providers specifically in Tennessee? And how can they effectively navigate these hurdles?

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James Lezzer: So I mean, we’re intelligent as a national company. So we see this across the country as well as the State. But you know, there are a lot of ongoing regulatory changes that are challenging and and just all the things that you have to do to care for prosperous patients things like

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James Lezzer: where nurses can provide care whether you can provide remote services or not. In that state there are a bunch of difficult things to navigate, that one State may require that nurses

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James Lezzer: can provide remote services, but another one may say, No, they can’t, and I think until we get to some kind of national standardization of those regulatory changes that’s really going to continue to be a challenge for agencies to figure out. What can I leverage? And what can I do? Versus? What do I have to do at home? That may be cost prohibitive, or may be really challenging for me from a market perspective, that

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James Lezzer: My cost of care for patients is very different from somebody in an adjacent state.

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James Lezzer: I think that’s 1 of the biggest challenges that people are facing.

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Dennis Gill: Okay, okay, so and lastly, what current tech trends do you predict will significantly impact Hospice care by 2025.

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James Lezzer: So I think what you’re going to continue to see is a growth and development of AI. I think you’re also going to see more

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James Lezzer: interconnectivity, interoperability between platforms that a lot of the barriers are coming down. People recognize that records need to move from A to B. So if I’m transferring a patient or discharging a patient from the acute care setting in a hospital and now moving them onto Hospice.

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James Lezzer: that whole record needs to shift, and it doesn’t make sense to fax that record. It makes more sense for that to be transferred automatically so that it can be easier for them to take that patient in, get them admitted to care and get them under care. That’s going to drive a better outcome and and

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James Lezzer: having people involved in risk based contracting. And the growth of risk-based contracting kind of is forcing that to happen. I think the other big tech trend that you’re going to see is AI. It’s still a little bit wild West out there. We don’t know what it’s going to look like.

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James Lezzer: I don’t know. You’re gonna know what it’s gonna look like a month from now, let alone 2, 3 years from now. But you’re gonna continue to see players and stakeholders evolving their tech as well as their offering. And what other solutions they can do, those organizations are all aggressively pivoting to find the right business model. That fits what people need. So I think you’re gonna see tons of different solutions come out from that standpoint in the hospice care industry.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah. And yeah, definitely, I think that’s in every industry that no one has. I would say, a very clear picture about that. What would come up, and we can’t even be prepared for that. So yeah, that’s hoping for the best. And what comes out to be a positive thing for the humans and everything and yeah, jobs remain safe.

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Dennis Gill: That’s the thing. Okay, thank you, James. Thank you for sharing your expertise today. It was lovely talking to you, and I hope our listeners did benefit from our discussion today. And to our lovely audience, thank you for tuning in. Until next time, I’m Dennis Gill, signing off. Take care, guys.