Pharos Innovations Partners with Encompass Home Health to Provide Home Health Patients with Post-Hospital Discharge Self-Monitoring

<0> Emerio CommunicationsShawn-Laree O'Neil, 312-725-3740 </0>

Pharos Innovations, a provider of scalable, data-driven, and cost effective patient engagement and care monitoring solutions, announced that it will provide Encompass Home Health with its new HOME CARE Tel-Assurance® module to monitor Encompass patients receiving home care services. Tel-Assurance’s effective model of technology-supported daily self-care has a proven record of helping healthcare organizations enhance care management efforts, while reducing avoidable hospital readmissions and overall costs.

“We are honored to be partnering with Encompass on the launch of our newest product in the homecare market,” said Randall E. Williams, MD, CEO of Pharos Innovations. “Encompass is our largest home care partner to-date, and beyond delivering a program for patient engagement and monitoring, we will be developing interoperability between HOME CARE Tel-Assurance and Encompass’ proprietary electronic medical record system called Homecare Homebase.”

Tel-Assurance participants report their daily health status using a phone or through a secure website. Use of readily available, easy-to-use and familiar technologies avoids unnecessary technical complexities and logistical challenges that can limit the scalability of other models. This approach provides early identification of patient deterioration or impending care problems, providing care managers with real-time information so they can intervene before care challenges escalate.

The Tel-Assurance module also confirms prescription fills, assures follow-up appointments are set and kept, assesses home care needs, and screens for high-risk issues known to drive readmissions, such as frailty and depression. The HOME CARE Tel-Assurance module facilitates the monitoring of additional home care populations such as patients who have had recent joint replacements, in addition to those with a primary diagnosis of heart failure, diabetes, or COPD.

“Pharos is a like-minded organization with similar values and HOME CARE Tel-Assurance will help us provide a vital service that allows us a cost effect way to provide more touch points during the critical days following hospital discharge and allow us to intervene early and prevent avoidable hospitalizations,” said April Anthony, CEO of Encompass Home Health.

Founded in 1996 by a Johns Hopkins trained physician, Pharos Innovations assists healthcare clients in engaging patients in their daily self-care. By proactively involving patients in their daily care, Tel-Assurance identifies impending care problems, so that providers can cost-effectively manage their “at risk” populations.