Netsmart, NorthStar and Hospice of Michigan Unite to Advance Innovative Technology and Establish Industry Standards for Post-Acute Care

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#Carequality—Netsmart, a leading healthcare technology provider, has announced a strategic collaboration with NorthStar Care Community (NorthStar) and its esteemed member, Hospice of Michigan (HOM), to support the mission of continually improving end-of-life care. This collaboration marks a significant milestone in the standard of post-acute care, leveraging the powerful combination of innovative technology and best practices to advance value-based care delivery.

“When we first started down the path with Netsmart, we developed a pioneering spirit to start leveraging technology at the bedside, expanding services and thereby enhancing the quality of care and communication with patients and families,” said NorthStar Care Community President and CEO Patrick Miller. “When the community comes to us with an unmet need, technology is often part of the solution. Leveraging our expertise in both technology and care delivery, we strive to innovate and set a standard that can assist other organizations in advancing their end-of-life care.”

HOM has been a longstanding Netsmart client for more than 20 years and is expanding this successful relationship to Northstar. This strategic collaboration aims to unite industry leaders leveraging a variety of solutions and services of the CareFabric^® platform including myUnity^®, an ONC-certified electronic health record (EHR) for hospice, home care and palliative care. The myUnity solution unifies care settings into a single patient record and integrates the capabilities needed to support value-based payment models into a single platform.

Additionally, NorthStar will leverage referral management, clinical decision support and the Netsmart network and Carequality interoperability framework to share and exchange data with health information exchanges and providers across the healthcare ecosystem.

Miller stated that the NorthStar team has member partners using 13 different EHR solutions and selected myUnity for its superior capabilities surrounding interoperability, clinician satisfaction, exceptional workflow and improved workforce focus on patient care. NorthStar strives to foster collaboration among partners, cultivating the growth of hospice technology utilization and promoting the ease of the myUnity solution to enhance the collective capability in meeting current and future needs of the post-acute care industry.

The strategic collaboration aims to develop the NorthStar Proven Best Practices Model, driven by the collective expertise of NorthStar, HOM and Netsmart. The NorthStar Proven Best Practices Model intends to focus on best-of-a kind clinician experience, creating material workflow efficiencies for users, and streamlining training and onboarding to deliver the highest standards of care and supporting the hospice community nationwide.

“By expanding our collaboration, NorthStar and Hospice of Michigan are committed as ever to delivering exceptional hospice care and services, further extending this excellence into its palliative care services through advanced technology,” said Dawn Iddings, SVP & Managing Director of Post-Acute at Netsmart. “NorthStar has continued to be at the forefront, not only delivering high-quality care to those they serve, but helping other providers along the way to make the industry better as a whole and we look forward to helping define the journey to value-based care success together.”

About NorthStar Care Community

NorthStar Care Community (NSCC) preserves and promotes the mission of not-for-profit hospice and palliative care – delivering expert, compassionate care to patients of any age, no matter their diagnoses, complexity of care, place of residence or financial circumstances. Formed by two legacy Michigan not-for-profit hospice agencies – Hospice of Michigan and Arbor Hospice – NSCC includes NorthStar Palliative Care, the NorthStar Institute, Jo Elyn Nyman Anchors Programs for Children, and NorthStar Solutions Group. In Michigan, NSCC members serve more than 6,600 patients annually across the Lower Peninsula.

NorthStar Solutions Group supports nearly 50 partners in 17 states and Washington, D.C., helping hospice and home healthcare organizations increase efficiencies, improve patient care and help lower the cost of operations through its 24/7 triage services (NorthStar Triage), analytics, custom applications and technical services (NorthStar Technology) and comprehensive gap analysis, best practices, fundraising and other management services (NorthStar Consulting). NorthStar Solutions Group also manages the National Partnership for Hospice Innovations (NPHI) nationwide hotline which refers patients and families to one of more than 100 NPHI not-for-profit providers. Collectively, NorthStar Solutions Group touches the lives of more than 10,000 patients and families every day.

For more information about NorthStar Care Community, including NorthStar Solutions Group, visit www.northstarcarecommunity.org.

About Netsmart

Netsmart, a leading provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) technology and services solutions, designs, builds and delivers electronic health records (EHRs), health information exchanges (HIEs), analytics and telehealth solutions and services that are powerful, intuitive and easy-to-use. Our platform provides accurate, up-to-date information that is easily accessible to care team members in the human services and post-acute care (which is comprised of skilled nursing, home care, hospice, palliative and senior living), and payer markets. We make the complex simple and personalized so our clients can concentrate on what they do best: provide services and treatment that support whole-person care.

By leveraging the powerful Netsmart network, care providers can seamlessly and securely integrate information across communities, collaborate on the most effective treatments and improve outcomes for those in their care. Our streamlined systems and personalized workflows put relevant information at the fingertips of users when and where they need it.

For more than 50 years, Netsmart has been committed to providing a common platform to integrate care. SIMPLE. PERSONAL. POWERFUL. Our more than 2,600 associates work hand-in-hand with our 754,000+ users at our clients across the U.S. to develop and deploy technology that automates and coordinates everything from clinical to financial to administrative. Learn more about how Netsmart is changing the face of healthcare today. Visit www.ntst.com, call 1-800-472-5509, follow us on our CareThreads Blog, LinkedIn and Twitter, like us on Facebook or visit us on YouTube. Netsmart is pleased to support the EveryDayMatters® Foundation, which was established for behavioral health, care at home, senior living and social services organizations to learn from each other and share their causes and stories.

Contacts

Netsmart Media:

Natalie Caruso

ncaruso@ntst.com
913.308.2080