Care3 News & Events
ASDad Episode 3: We Needed The Win - Part 2
Hey ASDads. This episode is all about recovering from the incident from Part 1. It was brutal. Sharing how we overcome our challenges has to be a core part of this podcast so I pledge to always share the challenges and the wins. Take care and thanks for listening! Comments? Drop me a line at asdad at care3 dot co.
ASDad Episode 3: We Needed The Win - Part 1
Welcome to the ASDad Podcast! In this episode, I discuss what incident occurred that drove the inception of this podcast. It was one of the worst days I've had as an ASDad. In short, my wife and I needed a win for the day. And we didn't get it.... The recognition of needing support, a place to share, and knowing I'm not alone led to the podcast. Thanks for listening.
ASDad Episode 2: How Autism Inspired the Founding of Care3
Care3 was founded in part based on my experience with my son, David S. Williams IV. Learn how this experience has led to an award-winning healthcare communications platform that we will use for our private community. If you want to participate in the private community for Dads with children on the autism spectrum, listen to the podcast to learn how. We'll see you inside!
You can also watch the video above to get the story. Thanks and take care!
Welcome to the ASDad Podcast!
Subscribe to the ASDad podcast on iTunes to hear stories of how children on the autism spectrum challenge us Dads, but also inspire us to be better men. It’s not easy. The ASDad podcast is REAL. That’s all we’ll say here. You will also learn how to join the private ASDad community through the podcast. Subscribe now! Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS
What If We Received Care Instructions On Our Phones Like This? #SendAnAction #TheCare3Way
Now that's better. Each task sent as an individual Action to complete. #SendAnAction #TheCare3Way
Care3 Awarded "Most Promising Healthcare Communication Solution Provider"
(Los Angeles, CA) – April 10, 2017 – Care3™(www.care3.co/blog), a leading developer of digital health technology, has been recognized as one of the Most Promising Healthcare Communication Solution Providers by Healthcare Tech Outlook. This elite ranking is a collection of the most influential and visionary companies that have designed groundbreaking communications solutions to the most urgent problems in healthcare.“We are honored to receive this prestigious recognition,” said David S. Williams, Co-Founder & CEO of Care3. “If interdisciplinary care teams collaborate with families around patient care delivery in the home and community using real-time communications and structured data to support prospective care planning, we will permanently improve quality of care for the underserved.”
“Care3’s selection was based on creating a truly collaborative platform for providers and families to deliver consistent high quality care for underserved populations,” said Alex D’ Souza, Managing Editor of Healthcare Tech Outlook.“Care3 is addressing a major problem that many of our readers have been urgently trying to solve.”
To request a demo, email demo@care3.co.
About Care3™
Care3 elegantly combines patient and family engagement with post-acute care coordination on one platform to improve outcomes and reduce costly hospital readmissions for underserved populations including seniors, people of color, and the disabled. Care3 is inspired by the realization that the most vulnerable members of our society do not have equal access to healthcare and receive woefully inadequate quality of care in their homes and communities. Care3 is built to fix these unacceptable and unnecessary inequities. Learn more at http://care3.co/.
Getting Care Instructions Like This Is Unacceptable
Hospitals MUST get better. Paper? A cross-out? Really?? #sendanaction #mhealth #TheCare3Way
Care3 and Congressional Repeal of FCC Internet Privacy Rules
Dear Care3 Family, As you may have heard, Congress rolled back the FCC’s internet privacy rules this past week. If the President signs this bill into law as expected, it would allow internet service providers (ISPs) like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cox and others to sell your personal online and mobile web browsing data and information on your mobile app usage.
At Care3, we want you to understand that we take privacy very seriously.
- No third party can view your activity on Care3. Neither the government nor any ISP has access to your personal health information and that of your loved ones on Care3. When you use the Care3 app to send text and media messages back and forth with family and friends, each text is encrypted so no one can intercept the messages, pictures, or audio files as they pass from your phone to our servers. This extra layer of security causes our app to be a bit slower than what you might experience with iMessage or SMS texting (as they are not encrypted). But we think the added security is worth an extra second or two.
- Care3 meets all government privacy and security standards for PHI storage. All data and media files are encrypted in our dedicated cloud storage facilities. Cloud storage services like iCloud, Dropbox, and others do not meet government privacy standards for storage of personal health information. Most people don’t know that. We want you to be confident that all of your health communications are safe and secure with Care3.
Note: Many popular messaging apps are NOT safe for healthcare conversations. The apps above do not encrypt text messages traveling between your phone and their servers to the government's standard for health information, the highest level. They also neither encrypt nor retain your data as required by law for health information storage. With this lighter security, hackers have an easier time if they want to intercept your information.
Many of you have indicated that you will increase your usage of Care3 even for non-health related conversations because of the high level of security that Care3 offers. We encourage this as our executive team has also increased our usage of Care3 for non-health related conversations as of late.
We appreciate your continued use of Care3. We have just passed 2,000 families using Care3! Have confidence that your information and activity are safe and secure regardless of what privacy access Congress gives to ISPs.
If you have any questions about the privacy and security of your texts or other information shared on Care3, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Like we always say, we’re there for you because you’re there for others.
Take care, David S. Williams Co-Founder & CEO Care3, Inc.
The Big Problems for Home Infusion Providers & How Care3 Can Solve Them
by Amina Gass
Let’s face it being a home infusion provider is not easy, you often struggle with the complexities of care tasks, communication barriers, and oh yeah using the archaic mode of faxing over all of your paperwork. What if I were to tell you that there’s a new technology out there that can make your life so EASY and all you had to do was just click and download?
Care3 is HIPAA compliant and uses mobile and social technologies to digitize and distribute care plans to community providers, patients, and family caregivers to coordinate care outside of the hospital.
Let’s take a step back and discuss the problem methods of home infusion therapy and see how Care3 can help solve them!
#1 Communication Barriers
Home Infusion providers face many challenges with communication. Whether you’re trying to call your patient (who may not even be the right point of contact) to schedule an appointment or waiting forever to get a hold of other care team members all increases frustration and we’re here to help! Using Care3’s secure messaging platform provides the ability to send in, report, and respond to all members of the care team.
#2 Care Complexities
Care plans can be very challenging. You have so much on your plate from juggling multiple patients with all different medication schedules to assisting with skilled nursing services, daily living, wound care, and much more. It’s a lot of work and here’s how Care3 can make you successful:
- Collaborate - Patient monitoring just became a lot more seamless! Care3 enables Caregivers to write, track, monitor, set reminders followed up with all members of the care team to produce the highest quality of care.
- Protect - With Care3, consumers can store Personal Health Information (PHI), share PHI, and interact with healthcare professionals without going to another, unsafe platform.
- Organize - Medication management is HARD! Care3 helps solve this for you by safely documenting each patient medication regime inside our app.
Oh, and did I mention NO MORE FAXING!
Let Care3 help you by offering a solution that no one else can solve and that’s right at your finger-tips. Care3 produces fast secure messaging and makes caregiving easy by sharing tasks.
Work Smarter, Not Harder in 2017!
To learn more about how Care3 can help you and your company schedule a demo today!
Our CEO's Caregiving Journey
Everything good in me came from my mother. She almost died giving birth to me. After surviving that, my brother and sister and all our childhood shenanigans, her life was filled with health episodes. You can see her journey below. Her cancers (bowel, liver, lung, breast) permeated her life. Her bipolar disorder fueled her success, but sometimes at great cost. And her COPD and heart failure pushed her decline. My siblings and I were caregivers for our mother for the entirety of our adult lives.
CaringForMom
d3d4
Another personal caregiving journey began when my first child was born. He is my son and namesake, David S. Williams IV. My role as "not only a parent" but active disease caregiver came at 24 months when D4 was diagnosed with severe autism. Now 11 years old, D4 still can't talk, isn't fully potty-trained, but because of our obsessively active treatment, has lost almost half of his autism by measurement. He also exhibits some savant-like intelligence that we are actively feeding for future development. Add all of this and our very inquisitive 8-year old daughter and my wife and I must be supremely organized (we plan everything), well-researched, efficiently active, and perhaps most importantly, willing to bring family and friends we trust in to help us be the best loving and successful parents.
I've created Care3 to help us achieve this goal.
Care3 is the caregiving platform for people who care FOR and ABOUT others. It helps you create a care team, plan care tasks, and easily communicate with everyone. There was no Care3 during my mother's 10 year decline prior to her passing. Hospital discharge plans were given to us on paper. Sure we'd fill the prescription and follow the instructions, but things sometimes fell through the cracks. The care plan wasn't sequenced and delivered to us in a way that could be easily integrated into our busy schedule.
Coordinating activities with others was also difficult because even well-intentioned family and friends didn't know how to help. While we were able to nurse Mom back to a level of health where she lived her final two years in her home, my siblings and I were not local and still found it difficult to coordinate her care. Losing Mom caused a tectonic shift in my life and started the path of recognition that caregiving had to be made easier, communication simpler, coordination more efficient, and activities integrated seamlessly into a caregiver's life. You will find Care3 enables all of that.
If you've taken the time to read this far, you are likely living a similar life situation. I’m more than asking you to sign up for Care3 (iOS and Android). I’m asking you to use it for initiating your most important conversations—those that require confidence, security, and are only shared with those closest to you. Care3 is built to carry conversations about health of loved ones and protect that information as you engage in the action of care, and it’s worthy of having any private conversation.
Care3 isn't for every conversation, just the important ones.
Anytime you want to initiate and have a “safe” conversation and discuss private matters, use Care3. Regular SMS text is not secure and unworthy of your trust when it comes to privacy. Emails get lost in the chaos of daily life. I consider messages on WhatsApp almost semi-public because you can see everyone who is also on that app. Do you trust Facebook or its messaging app to protect your most important and private discussions? But on Care3, you can engage in REAL conversations and they will be responded to with urgency and treated with the utmost privacy. You can discuss anything in small groups or just 1:1.
Thank you in advance for downloading Care3. Use it to communicate with the people closest to you about the things that are truly important--like caring for the people who brought you into this world and the ones you helped bring in it.
Take care,
David S. Williams III Founder and CEO, Care3
How to Make Providing Care More Difficult by the 115th Congress
By William Mintz, MBA, MHA - Co-Founder, Care3. Last week Congressional Republicans made public their plan to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act (ACA). While the positive impacts of the ACA are well documented and undisputed by most policy experts, the legislation has its challenges. Broadly speaking, people living in states that chose not participate in the ACA did not benefit as much as those in states that did participate. To address the perceived failing of the ACA, the repeal and replace legislation titled the American Health Care Act, focuses mainly on health insurance coverage. As it currently stands the AHCA would remove 14 million people from the insurance rosters next year and 24 million total by 2026. While the Congressional Budget Office has determined that the AHCA will have a positive impact on the federal budget, leading industry groups have stated that the AHCA would do more harm than good.
Sicker loved ones
The impact of the AHCA to caregivers will be significant. Without access to health insurance people will become sicker placing a greater burden on their caregivers. In the March 2017 issue of Health Affairs a study was released that concludes having health insurance would not only help people identify their chronic conditions, but it would help them bring the diseases under control. While the research into the effect of health insurance on health is not 100% conclusive across all conditions, it is widely accepted that the best means to a healthier population is through increasing access to health insurance.
Less professional support
All early analyses of the AHCA indicate that it will have a negative effect on providers. One of the landmark achievements of the ACA was to decrease the level of uncompensated care provided by doctors and hospitals. Prior to the ACA, the estimates for uncompensated care were over $62 billion annually and growing. With the additional revenue resulting from lower levels of uninsured and underinsured patients, providers have been able to increase service offerings and invest in population health management. The ACA directly incentivises doctors and hospitals to provide more holistic care. These incentives are being used to invest in population health management tools and services ranging from technology to home and community based services. Of the hundreds of cottage industries created by the ACA some of the most helpful to caregivers are home and community-based services. Without the ACA, access to these services would be much sparser making caregiving much more difficult.
Higher out of pocket expenses
The American Health Care Act does one thing well, it shifts the responsibility to pay for healthcare square on the shoulders of the consumer. The mantra of personal accountability is embodied by this proposed legislation. The AHCA emphasizes the use of health care savings accounts and tax credits. These financing mechanisms along with the changes to health insurance regulations will make health insurance out of reach for most Americans. Under the AHCA caregivers will have a catastrophic increase in out of pocket health expenditures. Not only will insurance premiums rise, but so will copays. Providers will increase initiatives to balance-bill patients as their revenue declines in step with the increase in uninsured and underinsured patients. Caregivers already spend nearly $7,000 annually on out of pocket costs associated with caregiving. Being a caregiver is already financially burdensome, and under the AHCA being a caregiver could be worse.
The ACA was not perfect out of the gate, and that was very much by design. Progress must not be halted because elected officials act like bickering siblings and seek only to undermine the opposition. Healthcare is expensive, and merely shifting the financial responsibility around does not help. To make a lasting change providers and consumers must continue to adopt behaviors and technologies that can help them better manage their care. Remember that, at one time or another, we will all be caregivers or in need of one.
Events From This Weekend #caregivers #travelban
Care3 Family, This weekend has seen unprecedented activity with the US Government ban on immigrants from seven countries. Some of these detainees were doctors who practice at leading healthcare institutions that serve our loved ones, including a hospital system where my sister receives care.
No matter where we fall on the political spectrum, we all want the best care we can get for our family and others. We can’t have our healthcare professionals unavailable to care for our loved ones because of poor policy implementation. We work too hard to keep our loved ones at their highest level and they deserve the best possible care.
Please contact your elected officials to raise your voice on behalf of all caregivers and the patients and loved ones we care for.
Take care,
David S. Williams III Co-Founder & CEO Care3, Inc.