Telephony

In the delivery of home-based care, the word "telephony" is generally used to describe the use of telephones as a tool for capturing visit information. The typical scenario is that the healthcare employee dials a toll-free number upon arrival at the patient's home, essentially "clocking in", then calls again as they leave to "clock out". In many cases, the staff member can also use the phone keypad to enter numbers to report the activities and services provided.

Horizon Healthware offers an optional Telephony Interface module that imports the employee time and visit data captured by telephony systems into PROMISE. The field-captured data is processed by the PROMISE billing and reporting system as if it were keyed from a time sheet - validated for proper coding and applied to patient accounts - but without duplicate data entry.

Horizon users are currently taking advantage of visit capture through a seamless interface with the Santrax attendance management system (Santrax website). If your agency utilizes a different telephony system, we will gladly work with that vendor to test and implement the ability to import visit information to PROMISE.

Telehealth

Similar to telephony, but more clinical in focus, "telehealth" utilizes telephone or internet connctions to transmit health data from the patient's home to the home health care agency. Vendors of this technology typically provide monitoring devices that the patient uses to check blood pressure and weight, and to answer questions regarding their health; this information is then made available to the agency for review through the telehealth vendor's software.

Horizon Healthware offers an optional Telehealth Interface module to import the clinical data collected via telehealth into the electronic chart of Horizon's ClinicPro system. Utilizing this interface, agency staff can view the clinical data they've captured in ClinicPro's visit notes and the information gathered by telehealth monitoring all in the same "chart" screen.

Horizon can create a data exchange with any telehealth system that is capable of sharing clinical information.