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Five Ways Messaging in Home Healthcare Improves Patient Care

Messaging positively impacts home healthcare.

Consistent communication and collaboration can be tricky when it comes to home healthcare—especially since it involves so many different people in many different places. Along with home healthcare professionals, a patient’s care team can include anyone from their primary care doctor to a range of specialists to family members and other caregivers. Fortunately, HIPAA-compliant mobile messaging (from mobile devices or tablets) is one way to address that challenge, keeping care teams in the loop no matter where they are and with minimal interruption to their schedule. Here are five ways that messaging benefits home health patient care:

1. It lets home healthcare professionals communicate while on-the-go.

These days messaging is overwhelmingly the most popular form of communication. With home healthcare professionals often visiting multiple patients, they need a way to communicate quickly with their team if a patient’s status changes, no matter where they are. Messaging ensures that the information reaches the relevant people without the hassle of phone tag.

2. It builds a stronger relationship with patients. 

Strong relationships with their care teams positively impact a patient’s care and well-being. With messaging, a patient can ask a doctor or a nurse about a symptom they’re worried about directly, rather than having to wait until the nurse physically stops by. When patients feel like they’re a part of the decision-making process around their healthcare, health outcomes improve and the costs associated with care go down.

3. It keeps the care team on the same page.

60% of home healthcare workers don’t have the patient information from the hospital that they needto provide informed care,  which can lead to a serious delay in patient treatment. With patients seeing so many doctors and care takers it’s important for the entire care team—from doctors to home healthcare workers—to have a quick way to communicate before making any decisions on treatment. 

4. It improves medication adherence for patients.

Messaging interventions that send patients messages to their phone emphasizing medication adherence, providing education about care, and motivating patients to pursue healthy lifestyles  are provento improve health outcomes. Home healthcare professionals can use messaging to automate medication reminders and provide patients with helpful information on managing their conditions. 

5. It reduces rehospitalization. 

When home healthcare teams communicate effectively and efficiently it reduces rehospitalization rates.Regular communications with patients about medication adherence also reduces admission rates. With HIPAA-compliant mobile messaging, teams can easily communicate with each other and patients throughout the day, improving their quality of care and reducing the likelihood of readmission.

At Vaporstream, we work with home healthcare organizations to streamline patient communications. All communications through Vaporstream are HIPAA-compliant and organizations can automate important regular communications—like reminders to take medication or follow up information for patients. To learn more about how Vaporstream makes communication easy for home healthcare organizations visit our healthcare page today. 

Contributor: The Vaporstream Team


*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Vaporstream authored by The Vaporstream Team. Read the original post at: https://www.vaporstream.com/blog/messaging-in-home-healthcare-improves-patient-care/