Eldermark
The Battle-Ready Senior Housing Software

It was just another day as 81-year-old senior and assisted living resident Mr. Russell from Minnesota was escorted to lunch by his caregiver. For reasons yet unknown to him, Russell felt an odd numbness in his right foot while walking to the dining room. Rather than making a big deal out of it, he decided to take it to his nurse later at his scheduled weekly check-up. 20 minutes after lunch though, his nurse walked up to him and asked him about his leg. He pointed out that it was unusually numb since morning, causing him to drag his right foot a bit while walking – something noticed by his caregiver. The nurse immediately escorted Russell to the clinician’s office where he noticed that the doctor had all his details ready beforehand and was prepping to treat him right away. By dinnertime, he felt better but still felt confounded by the day’s events. Mr. Russell could not logically explain how things went down without him even uttering a single word to anybody. On asking his caregiver about it, Russell discovered that the team responsible for his well-being at the facility communicated continuously through technology from Eldermark, enabling them to share information about his health in real-time. He understood that the caregiver had initially notified the nurse about his leg during the escort, and that the nurse had later taken additional details about it and passed the information on to the clinician before his condition had deteriorated. Amazed by how a simple app could turn his day around, Russell went from a potential serious health issue, to a wellness solution that both bridged the communication gap between his caregivers and the physician and provided a timely, effective intervention. Not only did the novel technology help increase efficiency in the care process, it also reduced the time taken to identify and overcome the residents’ health issues before things got worse. Russell’s story is just one of many examples that highlight the capabilities of the robust Eldermark software and the impact it has on the senior housing and assisted living arena.

Founded in 1991, Eldermark offers an electronic health record (EHR) and operational technology solutions that helps senior living providers manage all operational and clinical systems, including health information exchange (HIE) while paving the way for better resident care. “We aim to create e-connectivity between providers, residents, physicians, hospitals, and vendors in the achievement of lower care costs, best-informed care decisions, and enhanced care experiences,” says Mark Anderson, the Senior VP of Eldermark.

Present State-of-Affairs in Senior Living Communities

Like other verticals within the healthcare system, the senior housing and assisted living sector is undergoing several dramatic changes in terms of service models, clinical acuity, technology, and the overall business strategy. Changes in the economy and healthcare systems have created stringent regulations pertaining to care, a transition toward patient driven payment models, and, an increase in the demands of a skilled workforce; all resulting in growing concerns for enterprises in this domain.

We aim to create e-connectivity between providers, residents, physicians, hospitals, and vendors in the achievement of lower care costs, best-informed care decisions, and enhanced care experiences

Today, companies are struggling to maintain and reduce both healthcare, real estate related expenses, seeking to find a way to bridge the gap between their clinical, and financial goals as current strategies fail to serve both purposes. Experts also suggest that firms should adopt a stronger collaborative approach if they wish to tackle rising issues pertaining to patient care and communication effectively. “It is recognized that poor communication by and between care providers has become a common reason for medical errors, near misses, and patients taking legal action when there are negative outcomes from the care process,” adds Anderson. Today, it is important that there is constant communication between the whole team of people managing senior living facilities rather than just between the doctors or the clinicians.

Senior living facilities need to grasp and respond to the issues now before them along with ever-changing dynamics in the marketplace, healthcare policy, and technology, to succeed and position themselves for the future.

The All-In-One Senior Housing Software

Eldermark is on a mission to save providers time and money, raising the quality of care to ensure that organizations can keep up with the changing landscape. The solution offers a unique EHR-driven software platform designed specifically for senior care. Eldermark’s software, at its core, utilizes residents’ Electronic Health Records to create a data flow that results in improved care, actionable analytics, increased efficiency, and reduced healthcare costs. “Being a user of Eldermark for a decade, I can say that the product’s configurability, capabilities, and its nature to adapt to changes within the senior living system are quite profound,” says Anderson.

Curated by a team of nurses, IT professionals, consultants, trainers, and customer care experts from within the long-term care arena, Eldermark is a one-stop-shop for all senior housing requirements—from care and communications to meals and marketing. The product is unique, in that it is capable of handling resident data as it flows effortlessly, through up to 13 interoperable assisted living software modules. This, in conjunction with the involvement of field experts well-versed with the challenges in the marketplace, offers solutions designed to deliver precise healthcare data analysis and the operational flexibility required to streamline care, increase efficiency, and reduce overall costs. The solution is packaged in modules, each comprising the two most significant offerings to the market—the Simply Connect technology and the Point of Care mobile module.

Simply Connect is a powerful health information exchange (HIE) feature that makes obtaining health care information simple, secure, and efficient. It enables care providers to share real-time stories about the residents’ well-being with every other professional within their facility to primarily improve care and reduce unwarranted hospitalization. “We offer our Simply Connect mobile application that works on any tablet or smartphone device, helping to engage individuals and enhancing communications between care teams,” says Anderson.

He continues, “Our software triggers an automatic communication alert to the members of the care team in a way they prefer to receive the updates.” Another interesting aspect of the technology is that it provides organizations with a single platform in which they can access all the health records, and it can be integrated easily with other systems.

Next in line is the Point of Care mobile app that enables caregivers to document and track services provided to residents in real time, integrating the data into each resident’s Electronic Health Record, thereby linking it to the other Eldermark modules. From performing face-to-face electronic assessments and service plans to capturing meal attendance and tracking consumption to identifying missed revenue, the technology helps improve care and reduce costs by eliminating paperwork and the chance of human error.

As an add-on to the Point of Care mobile software, Eldermark recently introduced the Wisdom2Act module to its portfolio. The new feature makes it easy for on-site care teams to record and track residents’ condition changes electronically and in real time. Such an approach gives clinicians and nurses the data they require to intervene with appropriate care in a timely manner, rather than doing it the old-fashioned way, which is time-consuming, risk-prone, and costly.

Innovative and Result-Oriented

An example highlighting Eldermark’s capabilities, Anderson states a success story wherein the software helped a client understand the benefits of implementing the Point of Care mobile technology and the impact it had on the ROI. “We offered a housing facility, initially reluctant to implement Point of Care, complimentary use of our technology for a business quarter and helped them measure the difference it made,” says Anderson. Having deployed the solution at one of the clients’ eight buildings—that had over 120 units—Eldermark trained them on the solution for a short period. Subsequently, by using the software for a business quarter, the client realized that they were capturing around 3300 more service visits to residents, valued in total at approximately $26,000. “As the technology created an immediate and sustained ROI, our client quickly implemented Point of Care across the company,” asserts Anderson.

"We are proud to have been ready a long time ago; and now when our clients in need of a solution, we have the perfect one for them"

Since conception, Eldermark has a proven record of success in over 1,800 senior care communities and envisions building the capacity of their software with more features and integrations in the days to come. “We give our President and CEO Craig Patnode credit for the vision of the next thing needed out there and always being ahead of the market. We are proud to have been ready a long time ago; and now when our clients are in need of a solution, we have the perfect one for them,” concludes Anderson.