Advertiser Spotlight: RelayHealth

Taking care forward by making healthcare more connected

Providing contact center solutions since 1986, RelayHealth, McKesson's connectivity business, serves customers worldwide, supporting their marketing, triage, and disease management business needs.  As part of a Fortune 18 company dedicated to continuous research, development, and customer service, many of the RelayHealth solutions have been recognized as best in their class by KLAS Enterprises, LLC.

Premier Contact Center Solution: CareEnhance® Call Center (CECC) is the foundation of a comprehensive suite of healthcare solutions supporting the full continuum of care, allowing their users' customers a single point of access to their organization.  Through an integrated workflow tool, CECC supports care management initiatives by connecting the needs of patients and consumers to key providers and facilities within a health system.

This complete system improves patient satisfaction by delivering immediate access to patient information, directs patients to proper care levels, avoids inappropriate utilization, and supports a broad array of marketing initiatives.

RelayHealth's collective solution suite provides health systems with the means to drive additional revenue to their facility, build patient and provider loyalty, and increase operational efficiency.

As an integrated software system, CECC offers an optional Web interface component, allowing real-time, online access for consumers to enroll in classes or make self-referrals to network physicians and healthcare services.  All online interactions are stored directly to the CECC database, eliminating duplicate and manual data entry.  A library of health visual and audio information is also included for consumers to browse.

Many of RelayHealth's customers appreciate how user-friendly the software is for clinical and non-clinical functions.  For example, Rita Svatos, director of Nurse Direct/Population Health/Parish Nursing at Affinity Health System in Appleton, WI, stated, "CareEnhance Call Center has allowed us to become more efficient at processing calls because the software is very intuitive.  Users can move from screen to screen and caller to caller quickly and easily." 

Chronic Care Management and Disease Management Solutions: CareEnhance Call Center has also helped customers meet the individual needs of their patients through all stages of life.  The system's heart failure, diabetes, and asthma modules (more are currently in development) support a multidisciplinary, continuum-based approach to the patient's plan of care and self-management skills.  The system allows users to assess, monitor, and track the patient's condition using a single database integrated with their clinical profile and health history. 

RelayHealth's disease management solution enhances contact center services by meeting the unique education and condition management needs of an organization's patient population.  With the disease management programs integrated within CECC, organizations have improved financial outcomes while raising health status, healthcare quality, and patient/provider satisfaction.

CECC utilizes McKesson's disease management content.  Recognitions include one of DMAA's best disease management programs two years in a row, rated one of the top ten disease management vendors in the United States for the past four years by Health Industries Research Company, and JCAHO, NCQA, and URAC accreditations and certifications of programs using McKesson's content. 

Referral Solutions: RelayHealth has assisted customers with expanding their existing services by becoming the central hub for access to network physicians and facilities.  Their customers have used CECC to implement comprehensive physician-to-physician and patient transfer programs.  The system's contract-based functionality keeps the physician access services separate from other services.  Implementation of this service adds another revenue stream and often demonstrates a positive financial contribution by tracking and measuring referrals and transfers against downstream organizational encounters. 

Clinical & Consumer Content Solutions: CECC improves financial performance and clinical outcomes by providing safe, evidence-based information to patients.  The system provides over 400 triage guidelines for adult and pediatric patients, including behavioral health issues.  Customers have access to over 1,000 consumer-focused health topics and over 2,000 medication topics, covering the most commonly prescribed medications and over-the-counter products.  Additional patient education topics, detailed illustrations, and multi-media solutions are available to support the educational process.

RelayHealth's triage software provides a detailed audit trail that includes questions asked, dispositions generated, health information and care advice provided, and communications delivered.  The guidelines assist the nurse with evaluating a patient's needs and directing them to the most appropriate care setting. 

RelayHealth is dedicated to providing the tools necessary for providers to work with patients and family members to enhance understanding of conditions and treatments, improve compliance, and facilitate positive clinical outcomes.  Delivery of this information through a healthcare contact center ensures consistency and clinical accuracy.  RelayHealth's Patient Education content addresses an extensive range of medical conditions, procedures, and treatments.  Each of the 5,000 topics and hundreds of illustrations are structured in an easy-to-understand format and written using user-friendly terminology to maximize comprehension and reduce potential confusion.

RelayHealth's Virtual Information Exchange: RelayHealth's most recent service offering supports secure messaging between providers, patients, and laboratories via a Results Delivery System.  RelayHealth provides an intelligent network with solutions that improve clinical communication and accelerate care delivery by connecting patients, providers, pharmacies, payers, and financial institutions.  The Virtual Information Exchange enables providers and patients to connect interactively to collaborate, share information, and improve the delivery of healthcare. 

McKesson and RelayHealth provide online healthcare communications and connectivity that allow physicians to efficiently, affordably, and securely communicate with patients.  As patients' demand for access to physicians continues to increase, RelayHealth will continue to deliver solutions that include online connectivity to providers and pharmacies providing ePrescribing, secure and actionable personal health records, online access to lab and other diagnostic test results, and reimbursable online Web visits. 

Ask-A-Nurse^® Branding: McKesson's Ask-A-Nurse brand is a nationally recognized name for healthcare information, nurse triage, and referral services.  McKesson's customers who use the Ask-A-Nurse name report improved visibility by increasing name recognition and establishing their organization as a trusted provider in their community.  Providers of healthcare, including hospitals and physician groups, can license the Ask-A-Nurse program for exclusive or non-exclusive use by their contact center.

As a trusted and proven solution, Ask-A-Nurse organizations attract and retain more patients because of the easy-to-remember name, proven value, and national exposure.  In fact, consumers relocating to a new area will seek Ask-A-Nurse services in their new community for healthcare decisions.  In addition, because the Ask-A-Nurse name is nationally recognized and respected, organizations save advertising dollars.

RelayHealth Experienced Service Professionals: RelayHealth's experienced team of clinical and technical staff have helped organizations revolutionize the way patients access care.  They have developed the vision and expertise to help customers harness the power of their contact centers to deliver the right services to the right target audiences, centralize consumer access to the health organization, and provide a single touch point for the community.

RelayHealth has a team of clinical professionals dedicated to the contact center and care management product lines.  Their clinical and consumer content development staff includes a medical director who specializes in emergency medicine, several full-time registered nurses, and medical editors.  They also have over 50 external physicians, nurses, dietitians, and other providers who contribute to ensure that the RelayHealth content is accurate, up-to-date, and of the highest quality.

The service team that customers work with from RelayHealth includes Project Management Institute (PMI) certified project managers who keep implementation projects on target, on-staff clinical educators who meet clinical and non-clinical business needs, and a dedicated team of integration professionals to address custom interfaces and data conversions.  Many of their professional staff have worked previously in both clinical and marketing contact centers. 

RelayHealth's product development team has established processes that meet or exceed CMMi Level II certification.  This third-party certification is a recognized endorsement that RelayHealth software has followed certain development and testing processes.  RelayHealth's product support team has been certified by Support Center Practices (SCP) for the past four years.  They are able to close over 30% of their cases on initial contact, with an additional 45% of their cases closing within one day.  Customer satisfaction with RelayHealth's product support center is consistently high (96%) as measured by Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

RelayHealth is focused on their customer's success.  They are committed to advancing the success of each customer's organization by providing superior connectivity services, software applications, clinical content, and professional services to improve the health status of each user's most important customer - the patient. 

For more information call 800-981-8601, email connected@relayhealth.com, or visit www.relayhealth.com. 

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