Hospice

Charlotte Mather

Could you share your roles and responsibility in hospice care at AccentCare?

I got into healthcare at the beginning of my career with the motive of making a difference in the lives of others by contributing to the larger society. My 30 years of career in healthcare from the bedside nurse to senior leadership positions as vice president for nursing operations is dedicated to providing end-of-life care. My responsibility at AccentCare is to manage its clinical operations while delivering quality clinical care to our hospice patients.

Can you highlight some of the prevailing challenges in healthcare that obstruct quality patient care?

In the hospice injury industry, a shortage of workers is the biggest challenge. With the scarcity of clinicians that can provide timely care, we face the daily operational challenge of how to navigate recruiting and retaining employees with the required skill set. The Medalogix Muse technology is the perfect blend of art and science that helps in delivering accurate insights about patients’ needs throughout their end-of-life journey, especially as they get closer to their end of life. This is a great technological advancement in healthcare that helps us predict patient transitions in their end-of-life journey, which enables clinicians to provide better end-of-life care. It gives us confidence as leaders that we have something supporting our patients and clinicians at the time when our patients need us the most.

“For hospice care, health assessment accuracy helps us get very specific insights on how we are going to provide end-of-life care, ensuring that it is the best journey for the patient and their family. "

How does technological advancement in hospice care help in providing the best hospice care?

The impact of Muse technology's predictive analytics is profound on clinicians, as it predicts 90 percent accurate physical assessments based on dataset documentation and narrative notes. This accuracy helps us get very specific insights on how we are going to provide end-of-life care, ensuring that it is the best journey for the patient and their family. We can educate families and caregivers with confidence and in a very individualized way about what the patient is going to experience, what symptoms they might develop, and what medication they might need during their end-of-life journey. Its extraordinary accuracy helps us partner with them by providing insight into how much time is left for them to live, ensuring that the patients and their family members get as much time with their loved ones as they want.

Could you share insights about the strategy that you leverage as a leader to help your team members adopt new technology to deliver better care?

I think it's the change management 101 strategies that you adopt while implementing or adopting new technologies. It is really important from the point of view of the leadership structure of the organization that the team understands the reason behind the adoption of technology to provide excellent patient care every single time. To build momentum for technology adoption to provide excellent patient care, a level of trust among clinicians is of utmost importance that develops an understanding of how their documentation helps provide better analytics for our software system. It can predict the end of life down to seven to 12 days, which provides transparency for the course of action that needs to be developed to provide the best patient care.

Can you talk about the technological advancements in the near future that will improve hospice care?

As AI matures in various business segments, I will be more open to engaging with future types of AI and machine learning in healthcare or hospice care. In healthcare, we trust how technology can help us deliver the art of hospice care and can not imagine delivering care without it now.

What will your advice be to your fellow peers in the industry?

Stories are a powerful way of sharing the impact of how data made a difference in the lives of patients, families, and staff. I would advise my peers to be curious and explore the story behind what they are trying to adopt within the organization.