HealthCAWS Announces New Enhancements to Consumer eHealth Readiness Tool™
(PRWEB) April 02, 2014 -- HealthCAWS today announced that they have added new enhancements to their Consumer eHealth Readiness Tool™. Users can now align with the new Meaningful Use recommendations more easily than ever before.
Consumer engagement, accountability and value-based payments for providers are unstoppable trends in today’s health care environment. The HITECH Act focused on advancing technology in health care to improve care, the Affordable Care Act in part aimed at expanding coverage, and innovation in the private sector have all been contributors.
“A rapidly evolving legislative environment adds to the demand on provider and hospital organizations. The HealthCAWS mission is to bring support tools to consumers and these organizations to be successful in this new environment of accountability,” says Rose Maljanian HealthCAWS Chairman & CEO.
The Consumer eHealth Readiness Tool (CeRT), developed and powered by HealthCAWS, is a support service delivered in a comprehensive SaaS portal, including an extensive organizational assessment, real-time progress reports and a comprehensive resource center. It is an online business intelligence tool that helps organizations through the HealthCAWS 6 Step Quality Improvement process from getting organized to keeping pace with evolving market demands and delivering better outcomes.
The CeRT Consumer engagement progression was initially aligned with the NeHC Patient Engagement Framework, a conceptual model vetted by over 150 healthcare stakeholders and a diverse set of health IT, standards and consumer advocacy organizations and now stewarded by the HIMSS Foundation.
“Provider & patient engagement is important to HIMSS and our stakeholders, as they move forward to meet the Meaningful Use Stage 2 criteria. We are pleased that HealthCAWS is continuing and expanding upon their important work in this area,” says Mary Griskewicz, HIMSS Senior Director, Healthcare Information Systems.
The focus on meaningful use criteria in CeRT’s latest release is even more important as organizations wade through the changes put forth in progressive recommendations, some of which make their way legislatively in the form of a final rule to which incentives payments and penalties apply in out years. The new meaningful use recommendations released last month by the Department of Health and Human Services Health IT Policy Committee Meaningful Use Work Group of the Office of the National Coordinator included objectives in the following four key areas: Improving Quality of Care and Safety, Engaging Patients and Families in their Care, Improving Care Coordination and Improving Population and Public Health.
The CeRT items include the new recommendations; new item flags reflecting the changes are included in the reports, and a special report highlighting the subset of items flagged for meaningful use, guide users to help them understand and address the changes. For added convenience, all functions are at the fingertips of each user right from the welcome screen.
Organizations, such as state health information exchanges, regional extension centers and large technology vendors, are recommending the CeRT to their stakeholders.
“A big value is reducing background research and committee meeting time just to get organized, allowing organizations to quickly get down to the business of implementing improvements that can ultimately improve the quality and cost of care,“ says Maljanian.
Media Contacts
Rose Maljanian
860.673.0221
rmaljanian(at)healthcaws(dot)com
About HealthCAWS
HealthCAWS is a health care services company focused exclusively on helping payer, population health and delivery system clients improve health and reduce health care costs. By Combining Accountability With Support in an adaptable technology Platform, HealthCAWS mobilizes consumers and providers in a unified effort to achieve the common goal of high quality, affordable care – “the CAWS™.”
To license the CeRT please visit http://www.healthcaws.com/cert.html
Rose Maljanian, HealthCAWS,Inc., http://www.healthcaws.com/, +1 (860) 673-0221, [email protected]
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