According to Karen Bond, CEO and Founder of Cedaron, Electronic Health Records (EHRs) at rehab centers often require users to build their own forms and do not alert users to non-compliance issues.“Rehabilitation reimbursement is completely different from rest of healthcare. Therapists are paid under the Medicare Therapy Fee Cap. Each intervention must be recorded with the time. Some codes are untimed and therefore the hospital’s EHR systems do not have the capability to calculate this complex method of payment. The EHR also cannot send alerts when certain reports are due or when a G-code is required for the new Functional Limitation Reporting requirement. This causes hospitals to do many manual tasks to track of all of the requirements placed on Rehabilitation from Medicare leading to high denial rates.” Cedaron trounced the issue with a simple and seamless integrated solution, CONNECT, which allows therapists to spend less time on documentation and paperwork and more time providing patient care.

The software is an integrated rehabilitation documentation, reporting, and scheduling solution.

“Our system provides transparency through automated generation of medical charges and also offers Medicare CCI Edits before it reaches the billing system. The system automatically suggests modifiers when needed.” As a result of clear documentation processes, CONNECT customers have low denial rates and faster reimbursements. “We have built a complete rehabilitation EHR and a national database to measure quality. In addition, we meet all the compliance needs of the outpatient facility,” she adds.

While elaborating on market challenges, Karen states, “Everyone is looking for web-based products, especially for iPad. From a rehab scenario, often therapists move from patient to patient, so mobile solutions are most effective.” CONNECT offers the much-needed web-based solutions with secure patient and physician portals; also, the system offers patient functional outcome measures and patient satisfaction questionnaires that can be sent anytime during treatment.

Cardiac Care software is Cedaron’s other key solution for measuring outcomes and national database participation for benchmarking. It is designed to capture information efficiently from other systems for participation in the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) registries. The key benefit is its ability to interface with hospital systems, thus, reducing the data entry process. “Our software also validates the data coming into our system according to the specifications, then automatically alerts users when there are validation issues.” With a click of a button, hospitals can produce reports on their quality initiatives for the Cath Lab or Cardiac Surgery. CEOs or Cath Lab Manager scan see dashboard reports by physician reflecting the number of procedures and the related complication rates. Ad Hoc reporting can be done without knowing SQL queries. Measuring Quality automatically is good for the patient and good for the bottom-line of the hospital.

An example to illustrate the effectiveness of CONNECT, Concord Health was facing problems with its inefficient documentation process and insurance authorization. They were using an electronic scheduling system and an internally developed database. CONNECT’s easy-to-use interface and robust documentation procedures ensured that the records meet compliance rules. Within several months, the hospital had reduced denials significantly and spent less time documenting and manually calculating CMS rules. They were also able to eliminate an FTE from their admin staff.

“We change our technology every few years to meet the rising needs. Our products lead the movement towards EHRs, driving efficient, evidence-based care delivery, decreasing denials and improving hospital profitability.” On Cedaron’s business expansion, “We are a global company looking forward to further expanding our business internationally. We are also planning to add quality solutions for other specialty services.