Gentiva Health Services to Cure Paperwork Blues with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

Gentiva Health Services Case Study

Customer Profile Gentiva Health Services is the largest provider of home health care services in North America. Business Situation Gentiva’s 30,000 remote workers still complete their paperwork manually, not only requiring additional data entry associates throughout Gentiva’s 300 sites, but also prolonging the turnaround of important patient data and billing information. Solution Gentiva has begun a three–phase pilot program deploying Tablet PCs: first, sampling a cross-section of the whole organization; second, including more business personnel; and third, releasing a line–of–business application for field workers. Benefits Higher worker satisfaction and retention Increased productivity Reduced data entry through automation Expandable Software and Services Microsoft Windows Server Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Microsoft Office Microsoft Visual Studio ® .NET Microsoft Consulting Services Hardware Acer TravelMate 100 Tablet PC

Gentiva Health Services employs approximately 30,000 home healthcare workers including nurses, therapists, and administrative staff. Home healthcare involves significant amounts of paperwork and record keeping—including clinical records, claims, and benefits–related forms and documentation—and Gentiva caregivers enter volumes of data manually. In addition to taking time and creating frustration for the caregiver, this situation prolongs the turnaround of important patient data and billing information. Gentiva believes the remedy may be in pen–based technology and the Tablet PC.

Situation

Gentiva Health Services is the nation’s leading provider of home health care services. Gentiva employs a wide variety of staff to support its home health business, from business executives to registered nurses to administrative personnel. Healthcare professionals, including nurses, therapists, and other trained specialists, are considered to be Gentiva’s most valuable resource. The United States—along with the rest of the world—is experiencing a shortage of nurses in particular. Many industry experts predict that the nursing shortage might soon reach crisis proportions.

Home healthcare and healthcare in general, involves significant amounts of paperwork and record keeping, including clinical records, claims, and benefits–related forms and documentation. A significant portion of a healthcare professional’s time involves this paperwork.

Gentiva’s 30,000 remote workers still complete their paperwork manually, not only requiring additional data entry associates throughout Gentiva’s 300 sites, but also prolonging the turnaround of important patient data and billing information. In an effort to streamline the process, Gentiva had examined and piloted point–of–care solutions involving a variety of computing devices. However, Gentiva never implemented any of these solutions on a large production scale because of following issues:

• High cost of investment and expense to support large numbers of mobile devices with low or no return on investment
• Immaturity and technological weaknesses of the computing solutions
• Complexity of security and patient information privacy issues, including Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requirements

Solution

Gentiva believes that the Tablet PCs powered by Microsoft Windows XP will be not only a replacement for laptops in the business ranks of the corporation, but may also be the long–sought answer to field workers’ paperwork blues. "The Tablet PC technology has the potential to make a dramatic difference to our nurses," says Bob Creamer, Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President for Financial Operations at Gentiva. "This type of technology could give our company a competitive edge for recruiting and retaining nursing staff, which is crucial to delivering good service to our patients." Gentiva is also looking at IVR Technology and Pocket PCs to capture subsets of patient data. A variety of needs will require a range of technology.

Gentiva has begun a pilot program to deploy the Tablet PCs: first, releasing to a cross–section of the whole organization and then deploying a Tablet PC–based line–of–business application for field workers.

Introducing the Tablet PC

The purpose of the first phase of the Tablet PC deployment has allowed them to evaluate the hardware and software, plus the total effectiveness of the Tablet PC. Issues examined include:

• How does the Tablet PC change an information worker’s approach to work in general? For instance, are the employees able to work in unexpected places, like in a hallway during a discussion with a coworker?
• How viable is the Tablet PC for use by field workers? Will the learning curve be high? Will the Tablet PC be powerful enough to run the necessary programs?

Introducing the Cure for Paperwork

The company is moving quickly to develop a pilot Tablet PC–based solution using Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET with C# and XML programming languages, along with the Ink controls included with the Tablet PC Platform Software Development kit (SDK). Ink–enabled Microsoft Office applications ease documentation and communications tasks by allowing the user to work with forms using a digital pen, right on the screen.