You are constantly challenged to provide the very best care. Nursing homes are facing extraordinary pressures to enhance quality, reduce costs, and utilize staff appropriately based on resident acuity.  To assist you in meeting these demands, LSN has partnered with e-Health Data Systems (eHDS) to make the CareWatch™ System available to LSN members. CareWatch™ organizes MDS data into valuable nursing and operational resources which assist you in improving resident care, focusing on staff development needs, and reducing costs.  It includes the Medicare and Medicaid RUGS categories for each resident right at your fingertips.

Care Watch Helps You:

• Check data accuracy
• Prioritize information sharing and data processes
• Identify areas for improvement
• Focus staff training needs
• Improve case mix
• Improve facility and computer protocols

CareWatch™ helps you to identify resident care patterns as shown in our MDS data. With the knowledge gained from CareWatch™, staff is empowered to better address continuous improvment of care and operational performance.

Data Validity and Integrity

You invest a great deal of staff resources in resident assessment and care planning. The results of your assessment and care plan work are collected and submitted as completed MDS submissions. CareWatch™ allows you to review MDS submissions prior to transmittal to the state. It includes and ranks MDS logic checks that catch probable errors and inconsistencies with current and past resident assessments as shown in the MDS data. Missing or illogical MDS data can mean lost revenue under state and federal reimbursement systems. CareWatch™ helps you eliminate this concern.

CareWatch™ helps you take resident care and facility improvement beyond the QI/QMs. Staff can use the eHDS Watch Pages for pressure sores, ADLs, weight and many more to monitor the facility’s QI/QM levels and/or to identify residents who are improving or deterioriating since their last assessment. The QI/QM and resident status as Improved / Deterioriated tools assist you to easily identify and address both resident care and facility protocol problems. Both items will help you to be more confident that you are ready for an Annual Survey on a daily basis. Your staff will have the tools to monitor, trend, and initiate improvements. These tools are right at your fingertips to track medication utilization, accidents, skin/pressure ulcer issues, dietary and much more.

CareWatch™ includes charts for all QIs and QMs. The charts identify where the facility stands in relation to the state norms and whether the problems result from:
1) data outliers
2) problematic facility processes, or
3) QI/QM inconsistency and unpredictability.

With Care Watch, You Will Strengthen:

• Risk Management - Assist in identifying residents at risk and allow you to  implement preventive interventions to prevent decline
  
• Survey Preparation - Reduce and eliminate deficiencies through enhanced quality improvement programs
• Documentation of resident care provided
• MDS Compliance - Focusing staff time in identifying incorrect or inconsistent MDS data so submissions are correct before transmission to the state
• Resolution of QI/QM issues in resident care panning and become more directed toward solutions
• Our Knowledge of resident care outcomes with dfferent clinically smart views of of MDS data
• Use of Staff by identifying issues for discussion nd in making plans for improvements
• Operations with tools to improve managing Case Mix Index and to find potentially missed revenue from Medicare and other programs

For more information on CareWatch, please contact John Sheridan, President of eHealth Data Solutions, at (216) 371-2350 or visit their website at www.ehds.biz.