TORONTO, March 01, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) has qualified three vendors to a provincial Vendor of Record (VOR) supporting mature and market-tested patient engagement technologies that standardize surgical pathways and improve health outcomes.
Some 600,000 surgeries took place in Ontario in fiscal 2016/17, according to Health Quality Ontario (HQO). These procedures have a total annual cost to the system of approximately $5.6 billion, excluding physician fees (Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2014).
HQO has identified patient experience, length of stay and readmissions within 30 days as priority issues for continuous quality improvement in hospitals (HQO, 2016/17 Quality Improvement Plans). Surgical management solutions can be used to scale best practices that address these issues. The solutions enhance communication and educate and engage patients to support their own care, thereby improving patient outcomes and enabling health organizations to realize efficiencies.
The competitive process that qualified the three vendors focused on securing solutions that improve the patient experience, decrease length of stay, reduce readmissions and decrease surgical cancellations. An innovation procurement approach was used to establish the VOR arrangement, supported by all 14 of Ontario’s Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), that can be readily utilized by Broader Public Sector organizations. The VOR can be accessed through OTN’s Innovation Centre at https://otn.ca/innovationcentre/.
“By leveraging this Vendor of Record, Ontario healthcare organizations will be able to more quickly gain access to qualified solutions,” says Dr. Ed Brown, CEO, OTN. “It reflects OTN's commitment to helping healthcare organizations identify and more easily acquire scalable virtual care solutions that deliver the highest quality of care while also leveraging provincial purchasing power to obtain best pricing."
The solutions on the VOR support pre-operative optimization, enhanced recovery after surgery protocols, remote monitoring, patient education, patient-reported outcome collection, secure messaging, and analytics, according to Matthew Nelson, Director, Solutions and Venture Development, OTN.
He indicates the VOR can be a useful resource for hospitals seeking solutions to help standardize protocols for before, during and after surgical care, in order to get patients back on their feet more quickly while maintaining quality of care delivery. By using the VOR, hospitals will experience a swifter, more efficient, and more cost-effective procurement process.
“With SeamlessMD on the VOR, Ontario hospitals will be able to leverage technology to elevate the patient experience and drive better health outcomes more quickly. This is an incredible milestone for the Ontario healthcare system, and it is an honour to be the only Canadian company selected by OTN as part of this initiative to advance patient care forward,” says Dr. Joshua Liu, CEO, SeamlessMD and Chair, Joule Innovation Council for the Canadian Medical Association.
“Vivify is proud to be a solution provider for pre- and post-surgical process patient engagement,” says Eric Rock, CEO, Vivify Health. “This, in addition to our selection as the sole OTN Telehomecare solution provider, allows us to offer an array of solutions for many clinical use cases in Ontario.”
“The Ontario Telemedicine Network has long been recognized as a progressive leader in virtual care delivery. The top healthcare systems recognize the need to manage costly hospital readmissions while continuing to strive for high quality care,” said Joseph M. DeVivo, Chief Executive Officer at InTouch Health. “Our work, in collaboration with Tap Cloud and Safe Start, will help deliver patient-centric care from the time of intake to the day of surgery, all the way through to recovery. We are honored to bring new, cost-effective telehealth innovations to Ontario for improved surgical patient management.”
About OTN
OTN brings virtual care innovation to the healthcare system so that the people of Ontario can get the care they need when and where they need it most: at home, in their community or in hospital. For more than a decade, OTN has increased access to health care and education across the province with one of the world’s most extensive telemedicine networks. Working with its many partners and leveraging its unique knowledge of health care and digital technology, OTN addresses challenges by introducing and spreading new ways of delivering care that benefit patients, care providers and the healthcare system. An independent, not-for-profit organization, OTN is funded by the Government of Ontario. For more information please visit www.otn.ca.
To arrange an interview with Dr. Ed Brown or Matthew Nelson, please contact Gillian Wansbrough, 416-446-4110 x4004, or gwansbrough@otn.ca.
About SeamlessMD
SeamlessMD provides the leading Patient Engagement and Quality Improvement platform for health systems to deliver value-based models of care, including Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS), Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH), prehabilitation, readmissions prevention, bundled payments and Patient Reported Outcome (PRO) data collection. Research completed by academic medical centers has shown SeamlessMD to reduce hospital length of stay, readmissions, ER visits and costs. Accessible via smartphone, tablet or computer, the SeamlessMD platform keeps patients on track from preparation through recovery with reminders, video-based education, progress tracking and PRO data collection. Providers can access real-time dashboards to measure compliance and outcomes, intervene sooner for patients at-risk and drive quality improvement across the organization. For more information, please visit: www.seamless.md.
About InTouch Health
InTouch Health, the top-rated vendor in KLAS Research’s Telehealth Virtual Care Platforms 2017 performance report, provides its world class, 24/7 monitored InTouch Telehealth Network, comprised of regulated telehealth systems, clinical workflow solutions and software, and managed services to hospitals and healthcare systems for the delivery of clinical care, anytime, anywhere. Today, InTouch Health supports more than 175 health systems, 7,700 registered network users, and 1,780 care locations around the world as they deploy telehealth programs across their enterprises. InTouch Health has surpassed 1,680,000 network sessions, which includes 940,000 telehealth virtual care sessions over the InTouch Telehealth Network, and is forecasted to manage more than 300,000 clinical sessions in the next year. To learn more about InTouch Health’s work with OTN, please visit http://www.intouchsurgical.ca/.
About Vivify Health
Vivify Health’s mobile digital health platform empowers health plan and provider organizations to deliver prescriptive care plans, automate remote biometric data collection, and interact virtually with patients of all levels of technology expertise. Connecting the care continuum to the home, Vivify Health’s customers customize and deliver over 100 disease-specific remote care plans at any time, on any interval and to any digital device. Vivify Health is implemented in payers and health systems representing over 800 hospitals, measurably transforming healthcare costs, outcomes, engagement and adherence for the better. For more information, please visit www.vivifyhealth.com.
Contact:
Gillian Wansbrough
Ontario Telemedicine Network
gwansbrough@otn.ca
416-446-4110 ext. 4004