• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

  • Opinion
  • Health IT
    • Behavioral Health
    • Care Coordination
    • EMR/EHR
    • Interoperability
    • Patient Engagement
    • Population Health Management
    • Revenue Cycle Management
    • Social Determinants of Health
  • Digital Health
    • AI
    • Blockchain
    • Precision Medicine
    • Telehealth
    • Wearables
  • Life Sciences
  • Investments
  • M&A
  • Value-based Care
    • Accountable Care (ACOs)
    • Medicare Advantage

How ADT-Based E-Notifications Can Enable Better Safety for COVID-19 Patients

by Jay Desai, CEO & Co-Founder, PatientPing 07/27/2020 Leave a Comment

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Print
Why E-Notifications Are More Important Than Ever Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
Jay Desai, CEO & Co-Founder, PatientPing

As COVID-19 continues to impact the country, providers across the continuum face new challenges delivering care and ensuring safety for their patients and themselves.  During this period, sharing real-time information about patients’ care encounters across provider types and care settings matter more than ever. In particular, hospitals sharing admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) events with COVID-19 patients’ community-based providers is critical to ensure the best treatment course and safer more seamless care transitions for infected and recovering patients. 

Real-time ADT-based notifications include information about a patient’s current care encounter, demographic details, information about the provider or institution sending the notification, and, as permissible, clinical information. This data enables providers across the continuum to make informed and coordinated decisions about their patients’ treatment and care transition plans. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recognized the importance of such ADT notifications in supporting patient care and finalized a new Condition of Participation (CoP) as part of the recently published Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule (85 FR 25510). The CoP requires hospitals to share electronic patient event notifications, or e-notifications, with other community providers, such as primary care physicians (PCPs) and post-acute care providers, to facilitate better care coordination and improve patient outcomes. 

The necessity and benefit of these e-notifications has come into stark relief as providers and the healthcare system more broadly fight COVID-19. ADT-based e-notifications are an accessible and easy way to help enable better safety for COVID-19 patients and their providers while also ensuring efficient use and appropriate allocation of scarce resources. For example, ADT-based e-notifications can:

Enhance Safety for Patients Protecting patient safety and providing appropriate treatment is especially urgent during a crisis like COVID-19 when resources are limited and staff is stretched.  E-notifications allow hospitals that treat COVID-19 patients to more rapidly get in touch with a patient’s other providers and obtain important medical histories to help guide treatment and clinical decision-making.  Traditional exchange of data facilitated by phone calls, faxes, or labor-intensive data searches can introduce treatment delays, unnecessary or harmful interventions, and frustrations for providers. The faster information can be exchanged and a patient’s history is known by the hospital care team, the easier it is to effectively and safely treat the patient with the most appropriate interventions. 

Enhance Safety for Providers: Hospital e-notifications are especially important for post-acute and other community-based providers that will continue treatment for COVID-19 patients discharged from the hospital. Because e-notifications provide context about the patient’s most recent encounter, including diagnoses where permissible, they help guide the continuation of care.  Receiving e-notifications from hospitals allows such providers to appropriately prepare staff and put safety measures in place prior to treating COVID-19 patients. In particular, Skilled Nursing Facilities need time to properly and safely intake infected patients while Home Health Agencies need to prepare and equip their nurses for visits to homes of infected patients.

Open Hospital Beds for the Sickest Patients: Through real-time e-notifications, hospitals are able to more easily and quickly communicate and share information with COVID-19 patients’ other community-based providers who will care for recovering patients after they are discharged from the hospital. This exchange of information allows hospital care teams to more seamlessly and quickly transition recovering COVID-19 patients to the next level of care, which opens scarce hospital beds for the sickest patients.

Improve Care for COVID-19 Patients: Real-time e-notifications from hospitals allow PCPs and care coordinators to know when their patients have inpatient or ED events. In particular, discharge notifications can trigger critical follow-up services, including telehealth-based visits, to ensure COVID-19 patients recover safely and fully after they leave the hospital. Engaging COVID-19 patients after a hospitalization can help prevent readmissions and keep patients healthy in their homes. At the same time, PCPs are able to support the financial viability of their practices by being able to provide and bill for Transitional Care Management Services and ensure patient engagement in ongoing preventive and other clinical care.

Bolster Public Health Response: Aggregated and de-identified ADT-based notifications offer wide-ranging and powerful real-time data for local, state, and federal public health officials to detect emerging COVID-19 hotspots and intense ED, hospital, ICU strain.  Real-time data about the hospital and ED utilization can help public health officials direct and allocate scarce resources to the highest need areas quickly.

These are just some examples of how ADT-based e-notifications can play an important part in helping healthcare organizations effectively, efficiently, and safely deliver care for their patients during the ongoing pandemic – and beyond. 


About Jay Desai, CEO & Co-Founder, PatientPing

Jay started PatientPing in 2013 with one goal in mind: to connect providers everywhere to seamlessly coordinate patient care. Prior to founding PatientPing, Jay worked at the CMS Innovation Center (CMMI) where he helped develop ACOs, bundled payments, and other payment initiatives. Jay’s passion lies at the intersection of technology, policy, and community building. He has an MBA in healthcare management from Wharton and a BA from the University of Michigan. 

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Print

Tagged With: ACOs, Acute Care, Care Coordination, care management, care teams, CMS, CMS Innovation Center, Final Rule, home health, interoperability, medicaid, medicare, Patient Access, Patient Care, patient engagement, patient safety, PatientPing, physicians, post-acute care, Primary Care, Public Health

Tap Native

Get in-depth healthcare technology analysis and commentary delivered straight to your email weekly

Reader Interactions

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to HIT Consultant

Latest insightful articles delivered straight to your inbox weekly.

Submit a Tip or Pitch

Featured Interview

Reach7 Diabetes Studios Founder Chun Yong on Reimagining Chronic Care with a Concierge Medical Model

Most-Read

HHS Finalizes HTI-4 Rule: Prior Authorization & E-Prescribing Interoperability

HHS Finalizes HTI-4 Rule: Prior Authorization & E-Prescribing Interoperability

Meaningful Use Penalties_Meaningful Use_Partial Code Free_Senators Urge CMS to Establish Clear Metrics for ICD-10 Testing

CMS Finalizes TEAM Model: A New Era of Value-Based Surgical Care

White House Event Unveils CMS Health Tech Ecosystem Initiative

White House Event Unveils CMS Health Tech Ecosystem Initiative

Digital Health Faces Q2'25 Pullback: Funding Falls to 5-Year Low, But AI Dominates and $1B+ IPOs Emerge

Healthcare Investment Shifts in 1H 2025: AI Remains a Bright Spot Amidst Fundraising Decline

Digital Health Faces Q2'25 Pullback: Funding Falls to 5-Year Low

Digital Health Faces Q2’25 Pullback: Funding Falls to 5-Year Low

Beyond the Hype: Building AI Systems in Healthcare Where Hallucinations Are Not an Option

Beyond the Hype: Building AI Systems in Healthcare Where Hallucinations Are Not an Option

Health IT Sector Navigates Policy Turbulence with Resilient M&A

Health IT’s New Chapter: IPOs Return, Resilient M&A, Valuations Rise in 1H 2025

PwC Report: US Medical Cost Trend to Remain Elevated at 8.5% in 2026

PwC Report: US Medical Cost Trend to Remain Elevated at 8.5% in 2026

Philips Launches ECG AI Marketplace, Partnering with Anumana to Enhance Cardiac Care with AI-Powered Diagnostics

Philips Launches ECG AI Marketplace, Partnering with Anumana to Enhance Cardiac Care with AI-Powered Diagnostics

WeightWatchers Emerges from Bankruptcy, Launches New Menopause Program

WeightWatchers Emerges from Bankruptcy, Launches New Menopause Program

Secondary Sidebar

Footer

Company

  • About Us
  • Advertise with Us
  • Reprints and Permissions
  • Submit An Op-Ed
  • Contact
  • Subscribe

Editorial Coverage

  • Opinion
  • Health IT
    • Care Coordination
    • EMR/EHR
    • Interoperability
    • Population Health Management
    • Revenue Cycle Management
  • Digital Health
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Blockchain Tech
    • Precision Medicine
    • Telehealth
    • Wearables
  • Startups
  • Value-Based Care
    • Accountable Care
    • Medicare Advantage

Connect

Subscribe to HIT Consultant Media

Latest insightful articles delivered straight to your inbox weekly

Copyright © 2025. HIT Consultant Media. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy |