We have addressed time zone related issues that affected clients outside of the Eastern time zone.

Our new System Status Page shows the current state of the various components of the eMediCall system. In the rare case of any system issue, you can check the status page to see that we are aware of any issues and are working to resolve them.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is now available. 2FA adds an extra layer of security to ensure you're the only one who can access your account, even if someone knows your password.

In support of the COVID-19 pandemic response, we have just developed a clinical "Flu/Respiratory Illness/COVID" template designed to facilitate communication between nurses and Providers when a patient presents with symptoms and signs of a respiratory illness.

Significant performance improvements made to message list loading times.

New metrics for Falls and Template Usage are now available, as well as the Maryland Order for Life Sustaining Treatment (MOLST) template. In addition, a new test message feature for providers enables new providers to get familiar with the system before going live.

Two new templates released to further aid nurses. The Urine Request prompts for all important clinical information to allow the Practitioner to determine whether ordering a Urinalysis is valid. The template also has the CDC criteria for diagnosis of a urinary tract infection (UTI) embedded for Practitioner's convenience. This provides evidence-based justification for Practitioners when deciding to treat a resident for a UTI.

The Fall Report prompts the nurse for necessary information for a Practitioner to become aware of the event and make a determination as whether further action is needed.

eMediCall was a finalist in AMDA's first-ever Shark Tank Competition.

Practitioners now have the option to electronically sign their orders, provided they are written as a complete order, e.g. includes drug, dose, frequency, duration, and indication.

Providers can now be scheduled for on-call for another Hospice company's team.

• Death Certificate Template - A new death certificate template is now available to facility nurses. Practitioners are notified of patient deaths via eMediCall and are often asked to complete the Death Certificate. This new template is designed to provide the necessary information for Providers to complete the certificate (on paper or electronically).
• On-call Schedule - A new on-call scheduling interface is being rolled out which overcomes many drawbacks of the old scheduling interface.

A new and improved Metrics feature have been released. Our previous updates last month has enabled us to implement many improvements. Some of these new features include:

• New charts are now available to Facility Managers, Provider Managers, and Medical Directors that provide instant visuals for providers in their building:
  
  • Provider response times
  • Expired messages
  • Message escalations
• Individual providers may now view their individual metrics
• A user-friendly charting interface
• Review metrics for any time-period (day, month, year)
• All charts are exportable to PDF, JPG, and CSV formats
• Metrics are now available for Hospice and Office facilities

This new Metrics feature has been created to allow users to generate data regarding how well they are using eMediCall. These data and metrics may be useful for Quality Improvement purposes (e.g. comparing response times of providers, tracking expired calls, trending times and days of high or low volume calls) or Marketing purposes (e.g. publishing provider response times or time to approval for admission to Hospice). Data regarding use of the Template metrics may be helpful in providing feedback to nursing staff.

We rolled out a significant application update that improves how messages are processed behind the scenes. This update allows us to provide more features, better performance, and improved transparency. The following are highlights of the update:

Provider Triage - This feature allows all messages to be triaged by a provider nurse who can then forward the message to the on-call provider. The progress of each message can be tracked by providers and facilities.

Other improvements include visible and internal processing improvements:

• Cleaner, less cluttered message formatting
• Improved visibility of prompts for backup providers to acknowledge messages Cc'd to them, and for providers to supply a follow-up response to Hospice eligibility inquiries
• Improved feedback when submitting a form. The submitter is now informed that the system is processing their message
• Updated message filtering to be more readable on mobile devices
• Enabled better, and more detailed, tracking of message notifications and escalations
• Improved memory usage
• Flexibility in how recipients are processed, enabling more complex message processing flows in the future

We are pleased to announce clinical templates are now available to enhance the quality of communications between nursing staff and providers using the system. By including more comprehensive and standardized information with a template form, the need for back and forth communications and unnecessary phone calls are significantly reduced. Furthermore, using these templates will provide uniform data that can be used for the purposes of Quality Improvement.

These templates were developed based on feedback from users of eMediCall:

• Admission Notification
• Blood Work
• Change in Condition (SBAR, simplified)
• Hospice Opioid Request
• INR Report
• UA, C & S
• Ultrasound/Doppler
• X-Ray
• General

These templates are optional and users may choose to continue using the system as before via the General template.

Hospice feature

• This new feature expedites the admission process by allowing nurses to communicate directly with physicians using templated forms for admission approvals. It allows Hospice nurses working in the field to communicate directly with medical providers, and triage nurses with the field team. This feature has become the preferred choice of our trial users because of its ease of use and rapid response times.

Improved account management

• We have simplified the accounts interface and improved access controls. An enhanced search feature makes it easier to find people quickly.

Improved message management

• Sending, responding to, and viewing messages is performed from a single message list.
• Nurses can mark incoming orders as processed to keep track of which orders have been executed.
• Nurses may review messages on any date for their unit.

We are excited to announce that after undergoing a rigorous four-year application and review process, the United States government has awarded eMediCall Solutions with patent number 8,965,327 B2. The review process and awarding of this patent affirms the originality of concept and rigor of process involved in the development and operation of eMediCall as a system of communication. Such patents are exceedingly difficult to obtain in an ever-expanding universe of original concept development in the arena of software creativity.

Over the past several months, we have implemented significant infrastructure enhancements to improve the flexibility, integration, security, and management of how eMediCall features are provisioned to our users. Benefits of these updates include:

• Improved support for on-call providers providing cross coverage support for other groups.
• A simplified the login page for the desktop eMediCall web application. We removed the need to choose between Facility and Provider/Manager.
• Conversion of the external eMediCall website to be a responsive, mobile-friendly site. This was the first step towards converting the entire site. We will be deploying the next phase of this enhancement next week.
• Improved navigation after logging into the desktop application.
• Facility nurse accounts can now be given access to multiple units if needed. When a nurse has given this access, they simply choose from which unit they are sending the eMediCall notification on their eMediCall form.

Please look for our ad in the June issue of Provider magazine (p59)!

Long-term Care facilities, Providers, and Hospital systems have become increasingly focused on reducing the number of unplanned transfers to the hospital from LTC facilities; and re-admission rates to the hospital, especially those occurring within 30 days of hospital discharge.

To draw attention to these issues and to enable enhanced reporting on these issues, we have added two fields to the facility nurse's eMediCall form:

• Type of patient, e.g. LTC, Hospice, AL, etc.
• Patient hospitalized within the past 30 days, 60 days, or not at all.

By including this information in the eMediCall communication, both Facility staff and on-call Providers will have an increased level of awareness of a potential "change in condition" that may be occurring in recently hospitalized residents. Furthermore, by monitoring communications about these residents, Facility staff will be alerted to those residents who may be at greater risk for re-hospitalization.

We are pleased to announce the release of our new improved mobile web application for on call providers! The new version includes the following features:

• Respond to multiple notifications without leaving the eMediCall mobile web application. You no longer have to read individual text messages before responding to each notification.
• No longer have to remember which text messages you responded to and which ones you have not responded to. You will only need to be aware of the latest text message received or check the mobile web application.
• Streamlined orders form. We have simplified the orders form and removed an extra step when responding to notifications. E.g. acknowledging an FYI notification is now just one click. The interface is also quicker and smoother than before.
• You can check your notifications at any time independently of text message notifications.
• Improved security.

We are pleased to announce that our new data-reporting feature is now available for review by all providers and managers. We have interactive charts summarizing all calls sent from facilities to providers. This includes, but is not limited to: Notifications sent, Unanswered notifications, Escalated notifications, and Response times; over time periods that may be charted by hours, days, or months. It is now possible to easily compare specific data among facilities, or see the breakdown of call urgencies within a facility. Providers may also view data specific to themselves, or data for all providers in facilities where they are permitted access to this information.

We envisage many potential uses for these data; quality improvement (e.g. timing of notifications to providers), marketing (e.g. response times of providers), and trending (e.g. comparing data over time), and many others.

It has been almost one year since eMediCall Solutions opened for business. We would like to thank all of our customers for using our service, for the valued feedback we have received, and for their continued support. We hope that eMediCall has saved them time and improved their daily workflow. We have handled over 27,000 calls to date, and the rate at which this number grows continues to grow.

eMediCall is committed to providing quality service. We have recently made several enhancements to our service:

• We have significantly improved our server infrastructure. And as a result, the application speed, reliability and responsiveness has greatly improved. This infrastructure enhancement will allow us to add further speed and feature enhancements in the near future.
  
• We enhanced the mobile order form to work better with your mobile phone, especially with Blackberry phones. The mobile phone technology used to develop the form was upgraded, and the workflow processing and error handling was streamlined and simplified.
  
• Implemented a Medical Director access level providing automatic access to all calls for the Directors' facilities.
  
• We have released an improved call schedule interface to better manage the growing number of facilities and practitioners that some of our office manager customers are dealing with. Not only is the new interface easier to use, but it also includes checks to ensure no gaps exist in coverage.
  
• We have upgraded our accounting system to streamline our billing process and enable clients to access current and past invoices.