When responding to dying patients, hospice nurses have no time to waste. Efficient care is essential, so these nurses need easy, secure access to patient records while in the field. Carrying around stacks of paperwork or trying to locate files through a VPN connection just won't do.

Luckily, healthcare facilities like C2 Call Center and Crossroads Hospice are paving the way to process efficiency.

Call Center Coordinator Della Miller joined the C2 team in 2009. Since then, she's seen data management at the hospice sites move from a cumbersome paper-based process to a clunky electronic spreadsheet to more streamlined online forms. C2's data management processes have evolved as well. The center first started managing call data using Adobe FormsCentral, but it moved to Formstack when Adobe retired its form builder in 2015. Now, Formstack's HIPAA compliant form builder is an integral part of operations at C2 Call Center and Crossroads Hospice.

Challenge

C2 started improving its healthcare data collection several years ago when it implemented Adobe FormsCentral. The major benefit of Adobe's platform was that those in the hospice call center could interact in the same workspace as the triage nurses who were responding to patients after hours. In other words, a call center operator could use the system to submit information from a call, which would trigger a notification for the responding nurse; the nurse could then log in to the system to view the necessary information and submit a triage summary.

Because Formstack offers the same benefit and is easy to implement, Miller made a quick decision to move C2 to Formstack when Adobe retired FormsCentral.

"With Adobe, the nurses were used to logging in to a website and responding with a summary of what they did to help the patient. They could do that with Formstack as well, so it just made sense to go with Formstack," Miller said. "Plus, Formstack was the most user-friendly tool—no matter the range of technical ability—that I could find."

Formstack became an even bigger asset for C2 Call Center when it released its HIPAA compliant online forms and SMTP integration. Now, the triage nurses can receive call submission details in the notification emails, which helps them respond to patients faster.

"HIPAA compliance is massive. It really dominates our field of work—everything we do," Miller said. "Since Formstack is HIPAA compliant, we're able to send call details via email, which has increased productivity for the nurses. They have to be able to immediately see the details of the call so they can prioritize their responses because we're dealing with life-and-death patients."

Solution

Formstack's accessibility allows Crossroads Hospice to offer exceptional patient care. Nurses working from a mobile device or tablet can easily view the data they need, allowing them to respond quicker and develop a more informed care plan.

"Formstack helps our nurses easily get the basic information that any good triage nurse needs to help resolve a patient's problem," Miller said. "And the best part is that the nurses are able to view the information in the field—in a nursing home, in the rain, in their car—no matter where they are."

Before using Formstack, nurses had to rely on time-consuming processes to view historical data on a patient while in the field. For instance, they had to securely connect to the appropriate file server and search for a patient file on the network, or they had go to the appropriate medical office, pull the patient's chart, and make a copy of the chart—all before they could ever respond to a patient.

"Formstack has made everything more visible—and secure at the same time—for the people who are responding to patients," Miller said.

Outcome

Miller provided basic Formstack training for on-call staff at each Crossroads Hospice branch. After completing the training, people started asking if they could use Formstack for other administrative tasks in place of Excel spreadsheets, which were getting moved, lost, or edited and delaying processes.

"Because Formstack is so user-friendly and customizable, our partner sites adopted it as a tool they could use instead of Excel spreadsheets," Miller said. "Once they saw how easy Formstack was to build and implement, it just exploded."

Now, in addition to call center operations, Formstack is used across C2 and Crossroads Hospice for a number of key operations:

• Inventory management
• Inbound referral tracking
• Volunteer time logging
• Annual performance reviews
• Medication changes
• Outbound call tracking
• Reception call logging

"Formstack has really changed the inner workings of how we operate," Miller said. "It’s in every facet, every discipline, and every department in the hospices because of the call center exposing them to the Formstack product."

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