Brenda Smith understands the pain points of home health and hospice

From entry technical position to now senior product specialist, Brenda Smith has spent 27 years in home health and hospice, gaining insight into the daily challenges clinicians face. She knows that agencies don’t look for new software just because something is wrong, but because of pain points happening along the care journey.

That’s why Brenda is dedicated to understanding the customer. She listens, helping to identify pain points and explore how MatrixCare can help. Here is just some of what she has learned along the way.

Q: What is MatrixCare and what does it do for home health and hospice?

A: MatrixCare is a software solution that provides home health and hospice agencies the ability to document in the patient’s home. Clinicians can complete 80 to 90% of their documentation during the visit, which means after hours they can truly have time off.

Q: What is a day in the life of a home health and hospice provider?

A: Based on my experience, back-office workers are receiving the referrals that are managing the patient’s insurance, making sure they have coverage, and then distributing those patients to the clinicians that are out in the field. So as that agency receives the new referral, they are collecting all the needed information regarding the financial aspects and then scheduling that patient to be seen by one of their clinicians or multiple clinicians. And then those clinicians can provide care for that family. If I complete this whole process, once they’ve provided the care, then the back office is completing the billing process and getting reimbursed for those services provided.

Q: What makes MatrixCare easy to use?

A: We have a lot of integrations with outside sources, allowing agencies to receive referrals electronically and preventing their intake staff from having to key everything from scratch.

We’re able to retrieve patient history and give agencies that big picture of what’s been going on. And that information can integrate into the medical record so that clinicians have it in the patient’s home. If the patient has a long list of medications, clinicians can retrieve and reconcile those. It makes it easier on the clinicians versus handwriting it all and then doing more work after hours.

Q: What are some of the new product features?

A: Speech-to-text is a secure voice recognition software, allowing agencies to create their standard verbiage or to speak versus typing. A lot of us talk faster and more descriptive than we would type, so nVoq allows them to utilize that functionality to have better documentation.

Surescripts allows clinicians to pull in medications. And reporting analytics gives agencies visibility into exactly what’s happening at their agency, historical trends, and where they’re going with current processes.

Q: Why do clinicians prefer using MatrixCare?

A: I think clinicians prefer the MatrixCare solution because it allows flexibility. Clinicians can easily navigate to the different areas of the technology while assessing the patient.

Q: What are some of the current challenges facing home health and hospice agencies?

A: Ongoing regulatory changes. Agencies need to stay on top of what’s happening in the industry and we’re always testing solutions well in advance of new regulations.

Q: Why is it important to work with an EHR that spans the entire post-acute care continuum?

A: When you have a good relationship with your technology partner, and you can get everything you need from one company, the process is more streamlined and there’s only one point of contact for getting issues resolved across care settings — it’s all integrated in one solution.

MatrixCare’s Best in KLAS award-winning home health and hospice software, and complete solutions for out-of-hospital care, offer the cloud-based services you need to deliver compassionate care while growing your business.