Discharge Planning Advisor: 'One-stop connection' gets technology boost
Discharge Planning Advisor
'One-stop connection' gets technology boost
Call center coordinates psychiatric services
Amajor software upgrade has dramatically increased the ability of a New Jersey health system's behavioral health call center to serve as a "one-stop connection" for local emergency departments, psychiatric emergency screening services, and a stand-alone psychiatric hospital, says Dawn Fenske, director of Saint Barnabas Management Services in Toms River, NJ.
The call center is "customizing screens, creating reports, and converting all of our data from the old to the new software" since going live with the behavioral health component of a software program already in place on the "concierge" side of the operation, Fenske adds.
The concierge center, she notes, handles physician referral, class registration, and other non-clinical services for Saint Barnabas HealthCare System, while the behavioral health side coordinates the care of psychiatric patients across the Livingston, NJ-based system.
"We make sure the client has medical clearance, has all of the prerequisites for inpatient admission, has all paperwork completed, and that signatures are [obtained] if it is an involuntary admission," Fenske says. "If legal [counsel] is needed, we make sure it's involved. We act on behalf of both the patient and the facility."
Once the call center has all the information, she adds, "we call the unit, tell them patient so-and-so is coming in and the estimated time of arrival, and make sure there is a bed for the patient."
With the new software, Fenske says, "We were able to write our own guidelines for behavioral health — more or less a checklist of the needs and requirements at different levels of care. It pretty much creates a medical record, which is sent as a report electronically to whatever level of care the patient is admitted."
(Editor's note: Dawn Fenske can be reached at [email protected].)
Amajor software upgrade has dramatically increased the ability of a New Jersey health system's behavioral health call center to serve as a "one-stop connection" for local emergency departments, psychiatric emergency screening services, and a stand-alone psychiatric hospital, says Dawn Fenske, director of Saint Barnabas Management Services in Toms River, NJ.Subscribe Now for Access
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