Last Wednesday, Kelly Halkyard and I attended New England’s Patient Ping Community Summit. Patient Ping is web based platform that connects care team members across health care settings facilitate seamless transitions of care.

Natalie Thomas, IT Data Analyst

How does it work? To start, customers, which range from Accountable Care Organizations to Skilled Nursing Facilities to Primary Care Providers to Payers, identify the patient population they want to receive notifications on. Through this HIPAA-compliant platform, Patient Ping then sends a real-time notification, called a Ping, whenever the patient checks into a facility that is part of Patient Ping Community. For example, if I visited an emergency room in Connecticut and my primary care provider (PCP) was a Patient Ping customer, Patient Ping would immediately alert my PCP’s care team that I was at the hospital. My PCP would be alerted again when I was discharged. Without Patient Ping, my primary care provider might never find out that I had been to the hospital.

Patient Ping addresses a significant gap in the current health care delivery system—the ability to easily coordinate care across settings in a timely fashion. The current lack of interoperability between electronic health records (and lack of financial incentives to improve these information systems) leaves an incomplete picture of the patient, which has shown to increase the cost of care and lead to poorer health. With real time notifications, members of the patient’s care team can reach out to the other care team members at different facilities to coordinate follow ups and share any pertinent information that will facilitate the best care possible for the patient.

Through the Practice Transformation Network (PTN), CHCACT has been able to subsidize the cost for Patient Ping for interested FQHCs to support timely transitions of care. During last week’s Summit, Kelly served as a panelist during the discussion of care coordination and shared how Patient Ping supports care coordinators across seven CT FQHCs (with one more in the pipeline). While most of these health centers have only been up and running with Patient Ping for a few months, the data are beginning to show that timely notification, coupled with care coordination interventions, lead to decreases in emergency department use.

Have a Happy & Healthy 4^th of July!

Natalie