Post-acute patients are often learning to live differently than they did before, either coping with chronic conditions or making lifestyle changes to prevent recurrence of the condition that prompted hospitalization. Many need to share information with multiple healthcare providers and family members, and that need to change becomes more important as the patient gets older. Amalga and HealthVault facilitate those kinds of information exchanges, Golden Living said.
Golden Living will also use Amalga UIS to help integrate patient care across its own businesses, including skilled nursing, long-term care, rehabilitation therapy, assisted living, home health, and hospice.
Patients moving between Golden Living facilities will have their health information following them, without needing to be redone, the company said. "The use of Microsoft Amalga allows us to bridge the information between these various care settings and build a robust view of the patient across the enterprise no matter where they've been seen," Savage said.
Amalga UIS is in use at more than 100 hospitals, including New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and the Johns Hopkins Health System.
Golden Living plans to complete the first phase of its Amalga implementation, its in-house deployment, in the second quarter of 2010. The patient- and caregiver-facing applications are still being evaluated.