Saint Peter’s Healthcare System expands use of patient engagement technology to improve patient experience across New Jersey

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NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.

For the past year, Saint Peter’s Healthcare System has been a leader in patient experience in New Jersey by providing innovative patient engagement technology proven to empower patients, reduce anxiety, and increase patient satisfaction. Due to outstanding results last year, Saint Peter’s Healthcare System is now scaling SeamlessMD’s patient engagement and quality improvement platform across the enterprise as standard of care for patients undergoing caesarean sections and total joint replacement.

Saint Peter’s first implemented SeamlessMD for its caesarean section patients in November 2016. Patients using SeamlessMD are engaged before and after surgery via smartphone, tablet and computer. The program includes reminders, tasks, tailored education and daily milestone tracking to help patients follow Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS), a proven model for accelerating recovery. Based on what patients record throughout their journey, they receive automated feedback on how to self-manage common concerns. Providers are also able to monitor patients remotely using a real-time dashboard, allowing patients to stay connected with the care team, particularly at home after leaving the hospital.

“I was very happy I had SeamlessMD,” says a Saint Peter’s patient who used the technology. “The experience was much better than my first C-section! It was like a friend checking up on you. I loved how the nurses would check in. This made my second recovery so much better!”

By early in 2017, the program had produced outstanding results of reductions in hospital length of stay, which were presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Practice Management Conference in January 2017. Over the past year, Saint Peter’s has used SeamlessMD to reduce hospital length of stay by 1.5 days, allowing patients go home sooner and producing significant cost savings for the health system.

Attila Kett, MD, chair of Anesthesia at Saint Peter’s and champion for the initiative, says: “The biggest challenge that SeamlessMD helped us solve is how to educate our patients. It is clearly extremely important that patients know the benefits of this program and become empowered so they can make their own decisions. With SeamlessMD, our length of stay is dropping – even exceeding our optimistic predictions because our patients now feel safe despite going home earlier, as they have the knowledge that we’re able to monitor their recovery remotely and intervene should there be a problem.”

Due to this success in obstetrics and the advent of the Total Joint bundled payments, the health system saw this as a way to succeed in bundles while improving the patient experience, Patricia Richards, director of CMS Innovations & Value-Based Programs at Saint Peter’s, explains, “We are navigating changes with value-based care, and having SeamlessMD provides patients confidence to recover at home knowing they will still be connected to their care team through SeamlessMD. We receive automatic, real-time updates on the patients’ status, whether they are at home or a facility.”

Alfred Tria, MD, chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at Saint Peter’s, is excited about the technology for the orthopaedics program, saying “having an older patient population, it is important to find new ways to keep our patients engaged with our care pathway. Since launching SeamlessMD in our Total Joint Replacement program this past summer, we have already seen significant benefit with using the platform to ‘prehabilitate’ patients prior to surgery, achieve higher patient compliance with protocols and helping patients feel more supported while recovering at home.”

With a continued commitment to a high quality care and the patient experience, Saint Peter’s plans to expand the program to additional clinical areas in 2018.

“We’re thrilled to scale the technology across the enterprise as it allows us to reach more patients, and helps drive change for the industry. Saint Peter’s Healthcare System’s values mirrors our own ambition to influence positive change for the patient experience and for healthcare,” adds Joshua Liu, MD, CEO of SeamlessMD.

About Saint Peter’s Healthcare System

Saint Peter’s Healthcare System Inc., parent company of the Saint Peter’s healthcare delivery system, is comprised of Saint Peter’s University Hospital, a 478-bed acute-care teaching hospital and state-designated children’s hospital and regional perinatal center; Saint Peter’s Foundation, the fundraising arm of the hospital; Saint Peter’s Health and Management Services Corp., which oversees outpatient facilities, including the CARES Surgicenter and New Brunswick Cardiac Cath Lab; and Saint Peter’s Physician Associates, a network of primary and specialty care physician practices. Saint Peter’s Healthcare System is sponsored by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Metuchen and is a major clinical affiliate of Rutgers Biomedical Health and Sciences. For more information about Saint Peter’s Healthcare System, please visit www.saintpetershcs.com or call 732-745-8600.

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 about SeamlessMD, please visit: www.seamless.md