Kno2 Partners with VITAS Healthcare to Enable Secure Electronic Patient Referrals to Hospice Facilities from Hospitals and Health Systems

BOISE, Idaho and MIAMI, June 22, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kno2™, the company that optimizes patient document exchange for everyone in healthcare, and VITAS® Healthcare, the nation's leading provider of end-of-life care, today announced a partnership agreement to streamline electronic patient referrals from hospitals and health systems to hospice facilities, driving higher patient satisfaction, improved hospital CAHPS® (HCAHPS) scores and lower hospital costs.

Kno2's interoperability platform provides ever-expanding connectivity to major health information networks and platforms, aggregating and centralizing critical workflows, such as referral management, into a single solution. VITAS integrates the platform into its proprietary electronic health record (EHR) system to support centralized, seamless and secure sharing of patient data to start the rapid referral process, regardless of its origination. This capability enables healthcare organizations to minimize the time that hospice-appropriate patients spend in the hospital, and eliminates the labor-intensive efforts wasted on sending and managing paper faxes, ultimately mitigating the ever-increasing costs of care delivery.

"Our goal is to innovate and accelerate how care is transitioned from hospitals to hospice care," said Patrick Hale, chief information officer of VITAS. "The partnership with Kno2 will enable our hospice team to work quickly and more efficiently, giving them more time to provide comfort and increasing quality of life for VITAS patients and their families."

Hospitals typically send referrals to several hospice organizations simultaneously, through diverse ethods, to provide patients and their families with a variety of choices that best meet their needs. Through this partnership, VITAS receives all referrals electronically through Kno2's integrated platform, and is able to dispatch an admission coordinator to the patient's bedside within minutes, even during nights, weekends and holidays. The accelerated response time facilitates efficient care transitions, helps reduce hospital lengths of stay and improves HCAHPS scores—all while delivering much-needed comfort and relief to hospice patients and their families.

Yale New Haven Hospital has leveraged VITAS' integrated solution to expedite patient transitions to end-of-life care. Hospice-appropriate patients are identified within the hospital's EHR and referred directly to VITAS. Admission coordinators are notified via their mobile devices and respond immediately.

"Once a decision has been made to refer a patient to hospice, it's important to act quickly," said Jon Elwell, CEO of Kno2. "Any delays in communication are unacceptable in what is already a very difficult time for patients and their families. The partnership between Kno2 and VITAS resolves the demand for high-speed, secure patient data exchange, driving optimal care coordination. We are proud to be working with the leader in hospice care to meet the needs of patients and providers alike—throughout the care continuum."

About VITAS
VITAS® Healthcare, a pioneer and leader in the hospice movement since 1978, is the nation's leading provider of end-of-life care. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, VITAS (pronounced VEE-tahs) operates 44 hospice programs in 14 states and the District of Columbia (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin). As of the first quarter of 2017, VITAS employs 11,606 professionals who care for terminally ill patients daily, primarily in the patients' homes, but also in the company's 32 inpatient hospice units as well as in hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living communities/residential care facilities for the elderly. At the conclusion of the first quarter of 2017, VITAS reported an average daily census of 16,319.

VITAS offers personalized end-of-life care plans that improve patients' quality of life, resulting in higher CAHPS® scores and meeting multiple HEDIS® benchmarks. VITAS' longitudinal care continuum also offers a reduction in the following areas: 911 calls, ED visits, critical care unit utilization, hospital readmissions, medication spend and length of stay. Visit us at VITAS.com/partners.

About Kno2
Kno2™ optimizes patient document exchange for everyone in healthcare. The company's cloud-based platform improves the healthcare experience for providers and their patients by making the sharing of documents easy, affordable and secure. Even healthcare providers with limited resources can participate in the simple, structured exchange of patient documents—without changing their workflow or technology infrastructure. The Kno2 platform captures and exchanges documents from virtually any source, ranging from a fax machine to an EMR/EHR. The intelligent platform determines the most interoperable format and method of exchange for a document. All of this functionality is available through a simple set of APIs or through Kno2's provider portal. Learn more about how Kno2 adds value to patient document exchange at www.kno2.com.

Media Contact for Kno2:
Joy DiNaro
Amendola Communications
[email protected] 
847.809.0406 

Media Contact for VITAS Healthcare:
Claudia Quinta
VITAS Director of Public Relations
[email protected] 
305.350.4359

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kno2-partners-with-vitas-healthcare-to-enable-secure-electronic-patient-referrals-to-hospice-facilities-from-hospitals-and-health-systems-300478104.html

SOURCE Kno2

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