Care3 News & Events
Care3 PACE Success Stories
Elderly Woman with Heart Failure and COPD
One story is of an elderly woman with heart failure and COPD who lives at home. Even though she went to the PACE center to receive medical care and recreational activities twice a week, her family still needed to make sure she could take care of herself to avoid going into a nursing home.
Her family used Care3 to track the housekeeping and fluid intake to avoid falls and over-hydration. Over the course of three months, her falls reduced and she stayed out of the hospital.
Chinese Participant Family
A Chinese woman went to the PACE center three times a week and needed home-based therapy to complement the care in the center. The problem was that the doctor couldn’t make contact with the woman’s family, mostly for scheduling reasons. The elderly woman took a flyer home about Care3 (we offer Chinese as one of our languages) to connect with her doctor and the care team.
The woman’s family began using Care3 to send messages and indicate completion with home-based care tasks and therapies. Care3 was the conduit for helping optimize the home environment for the patient and gave insight about care in the home that the doctor and other care team members were blind to and would eventually lead to problems.
Home Care: Parkinson’s
There’s the story of the 70 year-old man with Parkinson’s and onset of dementia who had been hospitalized twice in the last two months because of falls. His 74 year-old brother was his caregiver and needed an app to manage the home care aide he had hired for his brother.
He found Care3 and started a conversation with the aide to track the care tasks to be completed. His brother was reluctant to allow his aide to use a mobile app while taking care of him. After 60 days on the app, there were no more falls and the brother began using the app himself to connect with his brother and other family members about his care. Care3 helped bring the family together, improve the brother’s care, and help the home care worker track her work.
Participant with Family Out of State
A participant in California had two adult children living in Texas. The adult children employed a home care aide to look in on their mother a few days a week in addition to the PACE care she was receiving. The problem was communication. Phone calls and voicemails from the adult children went unanswered because of time zone issues, scheduling issues, and other obstacles that made correspondence nearly impossible.
The PACE program began using Care3 for text messaging with participant family members. The Texas family was ecstatic. They could finally be in touch with the interdisciplinary team in a timely manner. They could schedule calls when they needed to happen. Most importantly, they could quickly get answer to questions from IDT members and not have to wait for a return phone call that often never came. Think about the level of frustration avoided just by offering a texting solution—reduced anxiety from the participant family members who are remote and much less clinical burnout for IDT members due to inability to respond.
What You Don't Know Will Harm Your Participants
When was the last time a participant had a fall or other event in your PACE center that led to an emergency visit?
If your program is like most, that doesn’t happen much in the center, but happens at home. The data is clear: incidents that require emergency visits and hospitalizations are the greatest risks to positive outcomes and financial viability of PACE programs.
So, what are you doing to gain insight into and influence what happens at home? Knowing what happens at home can reduce these negative events. But if you don’t know what’s going on outside of the center, your participants are at higher risk of harm and your program will have to cover the cost of more emergency visits and hospitalizations. Thankfully, there’s a proven solution to this problem.
Welcome to Care3.
Care3 is the proven communications and planning platform that helps your IDT plan what happens outside of the center, getting alerts with care tasks are not complete so they can intervene to avoid emergency visits and hospitalizations.
With Care3, you get:
Better engagement from participant families and IDT staff (90-100% in pilots)
Higher care plan adherence outside of the PACE center (68% increase in task completion at home)
Daily alerts notifying your IDT if care plan tasks are not completed outside of the center (results show 5% reduction in falls leading to ED visits and hospitalizations)
Weekly and monthly reports on care plan adherence, symptom severity, and incidents (e.g., falls)
Proven ROI when applied to your PACE participants (projected 20x ROI).
The Care3 5% Guarantee
Care3 guarantees your program will reduce falls by a minimum of 5%. Think of what that would mean to your participants. Think of how much more successful your program can be just a 5% reduction in acute care costs each month—or roughly $600 per participant per month. Care3 guarantees these results.
It’s time to take control of what happens outside of the center, just like you control what happens inside. Care3 can make that happen for your PACE program.
To schedule a 30-minute deep dive, email us at five@care3.co.
PACE Final Rule 2019 - More Timely Services with Remote Reassessments
It has been a long time coming, but the CMS final PACE rule is out! Now, the question becomes how can we use it to deliver better care to more participants? One of the key changes in the new rule that can make everyone’s life better, is the use of remote technologies to conduct non-scheduled assessments. This time saving change will allow you to more efficiently reassess a participant’s condition to make non-clinically complex changes to their plan.
According to the 2017 PACE Annual Report, 55 out of 74 PACE organizations were cited for not processing service requests in a timely manner. Changes in the PACE rule allowing for the use of remote technology for certain unscheduled reassessments will help reduce the time needed to process service requests, ensuring that your participants will get the care they need in a timely manner.
“Care3 has truncated the provision of service, the communication of that service to participant and family, and the documentation of that service down to minutes from days” - PACE Senior Administrator
It is important to note, that remote technology doesn’t have to be Telehealth, remote monitoring, or anything complex and expensive. Care3 has been successfully used in PACE to improve communications between the IDT, participant caregiver, and direct service (home care) workers. By using Care3’s intuitive messaging features, your program can conduct unscheduled reassessments, collect all necessary documentation, and deliver the world-class PACE services your participants need.
To learn more, contact us at pace@care3.co.
NC PACE: Working Together Wins!
Hello PACE3 Community! We are proud to announce that Care3 is a Gold Sponsor of the North Carolina PACE Association, and we are looking forward to seeing you at this year’s annual conference in Charlotte. PACE is one of the few areas in healthcare where everybody actually works together: the IDT, family caregivers, and participants. As it happens, this is also the theme of the conference - Working Together Wins.
In previous installments we’ve spoken about the PACE “blindspot”, the time when your participants are at home out of your direct care. This is also the time when you are most likely to learn about bad health events too late to intervene. Since the PACE model encourages everyone to work together, imagine how many fewer ED visits and hospitalizations there could be if there were no blindspot?
“I am hearing from families that we never communicated with before” - PACE Social Worker
Care3 has been successfully deployed in PACE, and has been shown to reduce negative health events through improved communication and increased caregiver engagement.
To see how Care3 can help you reduce ED visits and hospitalizations, visit www.care3.co/pace for a quick 3-minute demo.
PACE3: How to Share Critical Information
Interoperability must go one step further in PACE, it is not enough to just share data between EHRs. Information must make it into the hands of those caring for your participants in the home and in the community. But what can you do when participant family caregivers and direct care service workers do not have access to your EHR? Care3 can helps you share critical information with the right people at the right time.
Care3 Action Planner
Links services scheduled to the assessment of need
Creates a schedule view for workers as well as a schedule for a participants and families
Itemized task lists created by discipline and need
Care3 Mobile
Store PHI and capture documentation at the time of service
Notifications of service changes to Direct Service Workers
Incident reporting (e.g., falls, hospitalizations) and medication reminders and adherence tracking
“Care3 extends your PACE program beyond the center and into participants’ homes.” — PACE Center Administrator
With Care3, everyone caring for your participants can share information not only through text messaging, but also by tracking care task completion, medication adherence, and symptom severity. Care3 makes interoperability possible for PACE.
PACE3: Ready. Set. Share.
Hello PACE3 community. We’ve heard on several occasions that the future of PACE will require technological innovation to meet the goals of PACE 2.0. On February 11, 2019, CMS issued a proposed rule that would drastically improve interoperability and patient access to critical health information. Adopting the information sharing requirements of this new policy will help you seamlessly extend the PACE care model to more populations and achieve PACE 2.0 growth.
“We are seeking ways to use CMS waivers to expand our capacity to use community-based primary care providers to attract and care for new participants”
- Senior Vice President of Senior Services
As new participants are enrolled, expanding the PACE model to new populations, you will need to increase your ability to share relevant health information with all providers and caregivers who touch your participants. PACE 2.0 calls for new relationships with community-based primary care physicians and specialists who are not part of your program to drive increased enrollment. However, to create a well coordinated and helpful experience for your participants you will need greater interoperability between your in-center systems/processes and anyone caring for your participants outside of the center.
To meet PACE 2.0 goals, interoperability of systems will be key to success.
Incorporating the goals and objectives of the new proposed Interoperability and Patient Access rule with the initiatives of PACE 2.0 will cement PACE as the leader of community-based care for our most vulnerable populations. Contact us to continue the conversation and see how Care3 can help you meet your PACE 2.0 goals and be ready for any new information sharing regulations.
Care3 Transforming Interaction Between Consumers and Healthcare Professionals
(Los Angeles, CA) – January 31, 2019 – Care3, www.care3.co), the leading care collaboration platform for healthcare delivered in the home and community, is transforming conventional interactions between care professionals, patients, and families for PACE and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). Conventional patient/doctor interactions are periodic verbal exchanges in an office setting with information transfer limited by patient memory of events since the previous visit. Care3 uses the three (3) main elements of communication – text, media, and data – to create digital “Connected Journals” between consumers and providers to capture the ongoing patient experience. Patients share their experiences not only through text messaging, but also by tracking care task completion, medication adherence, and symptom severity. If an adverse event occurs, it can be reported in real-time for providers to intervene, if necessary.
“Connected Journals allow consumers and care professionals to ‘talk’ about care without an office visit, phone call, or appointment.” explains David S. Williams, CEO and Co-Founder of Care3. “This new interactive format also generates previously uncaptured data critical for improved care planning and real-time clinical response to adverse events.”
Connected Journals have led to significant impact in number of interactions, clinical data points generated, and care plan adherence. In three separate case studies with dozens of participants, Connected Journals enabled:
the capture of more than 360 additional clinically relevant data points per patient per quarter
increased care plan adherence by 68% during the three-month period
450+ quarterly interactions per patient
an average of two intra-quarter adjustments in care plans (rather than only two per year)
To learn how Connected Journals from Karen can help your Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Rural Health Clinic (RHC), PACE program, or other community-based care organization reduce costs of care and improve engagement through virtual communication services, contact us for a demo at demo@care3.co.
About Care3
Care3 is the world’s first care collaboration platform for healthcare delivered in the home and community. The HIPAA compliant Karen platform helps community-based health organizations focus on consumer experience and operate more effectively by driving visibility and accountability for care delivered outside of health facilities. This unprecedented insight enables care teams to intervene to prevent costly outcomes such as emergency visits and hospitalizations. Learn more at www.care3.co/care-organizations.
A Solution for The PACE "Blindspot"
In our last installment we spoke about the PACE “Blindspot”. The time when your participants are most likely to be out of compliance with their care plans and at a higher risk of an ED visit or hospitalization. But when your participants are not physically in front of you, how do you know when to intervene to prevent these negative events?
With Care3 your program can influence, track, and measure the care delivered at home.
Key Care3 Action Planner Features
Alerts and notifications to trigger early intervention when important care tasks are missed
Link care tasks to assessment goals and objectives to measure progress against plan
Activity reporting by discipline to gain visibility into the care that was actually delivered
Key Care3 Mobile Features
Care tasks are sent as intuitive Action Messages, which can be accepted by all members of the Care Team including participant family caregivers
Receive helpful notification reminders for accepted care actions, new messages, and updates to the plan
Create Incident Reports to alert care team members of significant events such as falls and hospitalizations
“Care3 extends your PACE program beyond the center and into participants’ homes.” — PACE Center Administrator
Care3 has been proven to engage staff and participant families while collecting the critical data you need to keep your participants out of the hospital.
Senior Care PACE: You can't have eyes on patients 24/7
Care3 for PACE
Hello Care3 community. Last year we started our PACE3 newsletter profiling stories about common challenges of delivering community-based care to your senior citizens. We at Care3 have the privilege of speaking with PACE organizations across the country and by sharing these stories and best practices we aim to improve the lives of your participants and their caregivers.
For our first installment of 2019, let’s recap how Care3 fits within your care delivery model. On average most participants visit your center 2-3 times per week, leaving them in the care of informal caregivers far more than in the direct care of the interdisciplinary team. This is the “PACE Blindspot” where you have no timely information about, or control over, what happens to your participants.
Care3 has developed the first mobile communication and planning application for care delivered outside of the PACE day center. The Care3 platform has successfully demonstrated that PACE staff and participant family caregivers will use Care3 for messaging about care and tracking care tasks delivered outside of the PACE center.
“Care3 has truncated the provision of service, the communication of that service to participant and family, and the documentation of that service down to minutes from days” - PACE Senior Administrator
With Care3, PACE programs are improving participant and family satisfaction, reducing ED visits and hospitalizations, and generating savings.
Finally An App for PACE
Research has shown that high-quality communication between care team members and patients and their families has a positive influence on patient health outcomes. For instance, how does your team know when a participant needs to be brought back into the center off schedule? Or, how do you alert a family caregiver of a change in medication?
Care3 has developed the first mobile communication and planning application for care delivered outside of the PACE center. The Care3 platform has successfully demonstrated that PACE staff and participant family caregivers will use Care3 for messaging about care and tracking care tasks.
Key Care3 Action Planner Features
Digital action plan that can be updated and shared in real-time
Alerts and notifications to trigger early intervention when important care tasks are missed
EVV-ready reporting at the activity level, including location and assigned caregiver to ensure services are delivered
Key Care3 Mobile Features
HIPAA-compliant messaging to conveniently keep everyone in contact reducing email, phone calls, and handwritten notes
Incident reporting to conveniently document events such as a fall
Symptom and vitals tracking to help you monitor changes in a participant’s health status
“Care3 has truncated the provision of service, the communication of that service to participant and family and the documentation of that service down to minutes from days” - Senior Services Manager
PACE3: NPA Annual Conference Wrap Up
Hello PACE3 readers. Care3 had the honor of attending and sponsoring the 2018 National PACE Association Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon last week. This convening of 700+ people dedicated to helping seniors live in their homes while receiving outstanding medical care revealed several keys to success and the future of PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly).
As outlined here in a recent blog post by Care3 CEO, David Williams, the key learnings from the 2018 Annual Conference are:
5. New PACE programs are coming!
We can certainly expect this trend to accelerate with the new relaxed regulatory environment for PACE nationally.
4. PACE has a “blind spot.”
It is difficult to know what is happening with participants once they leave the center, and programs are putting effort into getting clarity into what happens outside of the center.
3. Gifts don’t always come wrapped with a bow.
We have to pay attention to our loved ones and how they express themselves because sometimes, the smallest items can be the largest gifts.
2. PACE is "radical"
PACE is concierge care for the disadvantaged
PACE is steadfast through end of life
PACE serves Communities
PACE addresses Social Determinants of Health
PACE operates in Non-hierarchical teams
1. Communications between staff, participants, and family mean everything.
Having a strong relationship with open communications can improve satisfaction and impact outcomes.
"We believe everything in healthcare can improve with better conversations and we are committed to using our platform to make it easier for your programs to connect and collaborate, while reducing the “blind spot” by illuminating what happens outside of the center with your participants."
- David S. Williams, CEO & Co-Founder of Care3
The Top 5 Things I Learned at the NPA Annual Conference
For the second consecutive year, Care3 sponsored the keynote address. National PACE Association President & CEO, Shawn Bloom, called Care3 “a fitting sponsor” for the keynote….Care3 CEO David Williams gives his Top 5 things he learned at this year’s conference.
Shawn Bloom announced Care3 as Keynote Sponsor at 2018 NPA Annual Conference.
Care3 had the honor of attending and sponsoring the 2018 National PACE Association Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon last week. This convening of 700+ people dedicated to helping seniors live in their homes while receiving outstanding medical care revealed several keys to success and the future of PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly).
Kim Campbell, CareLiving.org; David Williams, CEO Care3.
For the second consecutive year, Care3 sponsored the keynote address. National PACE Association President & CEO, Shawn Bloom, called Care3 “a fitting sponsor” for the keynote in his introduction of Kim Campbell, wife of Music Hall of Fame artist Glen Campbell. Kim delivered a stirring speech chronicling her life with Glen and her role as a caregiver during his battle with Alzheimer’s. As CEO of Care3, I had the privilege of spending time with Kim prior to and after her talk and experienced firsthand the warmth and dedication she is putting into CareLiving.org, her lifestyle blog focused on helping people caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s.
The Top 5 Things I Learned at the NPA Annual Conference
While both exhibiting and attending sessions, I had the opportunity to talk to and hear from more than 20% of all attendees personally. Here are The Top 5 Things I Learned at the NPA Annual Conference.
L-R: Jon Chun, Care3; Robin Iten Porter, NC PACE, David Williams, Care3, Jennifer Blankenship, CalPACE, Will Mintz, Care3.
5. New PACE programs are coming!
There has never been a question about the need for PACE programs. I met with multiple new program leaders looking to have their first centers open in 2019. We can certainly expect this trend to accelerate with the new relaxed regulatory environment for PACE nationally. State Associations like CalPACE and NC PACE will play a major role in program growth as well. And with the NPA providing tailwinds with its PACE 2.0 initiative targeting 200,000 participants by 2028, the environment is right for PACE to expand.
4. PACE has a “blind spot.”
During the conference I met with representatives from 31 PACE programs and one theme was crystal clear—it is difficult to know what is happening with participants once they leave the center. Any car, no matter how luxurious, has a “blind spot” that can’t be seen by the driver simply looking into the mirrors. The driver must turn their head to see if another vehicle is in this space. PACE’s blind spot is what happens outside of the center. Many programs recognize the need to “turn their heads” and put effort into getting clarity into what happens outside of the center. Knowing what happens outside of the center is critical to avoiding emergency visits and hospitalizations and many programs are taking steps to increase their visibility. “Clarity” is the third “C” in the Care3 C3 approach.
Kim Campbell delivering her keynote.
3. Gifts don’t always come wrapped with a bow.
Kim Campbell gave a powerful keynote about her life with Glen Campbell and his experience with Alzheimer’s. Her “Pepto” story made it clear that the gifts we receive aren’t always wrapped with a bow. Glen wanted Kim to recognize that he remembered her birthday and made a gesture that Kim wasn’t able to grasp in the moment. She regrets not recognizing the gift when it was given. I learned that we have to pay attention to our loved ones and how they express themselves because sometimes, the smallest items can be the largest gifts.
2. PACE is “radical.”
Adam Burrows, MD, NPA Board Chair.
Adam Burrows, MD, Medical Director Uphams Elder Service Plan/PACE in Boston and new NPA Board Chair declared during his remarks that PACE is “radical and transformative.” I have to admit, I was surprised, but when he laid out his five reasons, he made perfect sense. Here’s the re-cap of the five reasons PACE is radical:
PACE is concierge care for the disadvantaged. That is an amazing way to think about PACE. The PACE model brings participants access to specialists who help them stay in their homes and maintain health and quality of life. PACE truly is concierge care.
PACE is steadfast through end of life. PACE clearly is a companion with participants as they continue living in their homes with dignity and independence.
PACE serves Communities. By all means this is true as PACE coordinates care and recreation in the community for participants even outside of the center.
PACE address Social Determinants of Health. I would say this is most important because PACE particularly serves those who typically could not get access to high quality care. This clearly aligns with the Care3 mission to bring healthcare equality to everyone.
PACE operates in Non-hierarchical teams. All IDTs are empowered to fill responsibilities for a participant’s care. “Collaboration" is the key to success which is why it is also the second “C” in Care3’s C3 approach.
And the top learning I had from the NPA conference is…
1. Communications between staff, participants, and family mean everything.
I attended multiple sessions at the conference and saw several poster presentations. The theme that kept reverberating was how important communications were, whether between IDT members, participants, or their families. Having a strong relationship with open communications can improve satisfaction and impact outcomes. Isn’t that what PACE is about?
One of the most striking sessions I attended was an Interactive Roundtable led by Justine Medina of AltaMed PACE. In her session not only did she share frameworks she uses to ensure clear communications between staff and engagement with participants and families, but several people told stories about how simple conversations made a huge difference in how a participant experienced the center and how the family interacted with staff. As the leader of a communications technology platform, facilitating connection is critically important. That’s why “Connection” is the first “C” in the Care3 C3 approach.
Visit us at www.care3.co. To request a demo email us at pace@care3.co.
The focus on communications at the conference re-doubles my commitment to make Care3 the best technology platform for PACE programs to engage staff and participant families. We believe everything in healthcare can improve with better conversations and are committed to using our platform to make it easier for your programs to connect and collaborate, while reducing the “blind spot” by illuminating what happens outside of the center with your participants.
David S. Williams
CEO and Co-Founder
Care3, Inc.
Connection. Collaboration. Clarity.