Epic offers a suite of medical practice management and EHR software.
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WellSky Home Health
Score 7.6 out of 10
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WellSky (formed from the merger of Kinnser Software and Mediware) offers WellSky Home Health (formerly Kinnser Agency Manager), a home health agency management software emphasizing operations automation (e.g. scheduling, intake and electronic visit verification, etc.)
Epic is great to access from home or anywhere there is a wifi connection. It is very convenient for office or hospital employees. One time when it is not optimal is when I write a Certification of Terminal Illness for a hospice patient. I can never see it again. It drops off of Epic. I wish those notes would remain.
I think Kinnser Home Health is wonderful for all small, medium and large size agencies because you can't get any better from an employee perspective, and that is paramount to home health. I also love that you can go between Home Health and Hospice if you have both divisions in one system easily (a toggle button at the top of the screen). I think the financial management system is challenging when you are a large agency, but I still don't think there is anything better on the market, and I would highly recommend it to anyone
Interdisciplinary Communication: The care of patients improves when you are able to have the entire care team communicate with each other. Epic makes this process very easy by utilizing one chart for all physicians in the organizations. Care decisions and patient safety are greatly improved by seeing past decision making processes.
Patient Communication: With features like MyChart and Care Everywhere, Epic gives patients a great deal of control over their information. MyChart acts like a patient portal allowing them to see what their providers have to say, see lab results, make payments, and share information with their doctor all from a mobile device or computer. Having features like this allow the patient to take part in their care.
Improves Claim Efficiency: The way that Epic handles insurance claims is incredible. Claims are correct and double checked before they are sent to the insurance companies. This in turn, reduces the number of denials and improves the speed of payments.
The one thing that I feel the home health software could improve is its billing manager. While it submits the claims easily, if there are rejections, or problems, you have to work those through a different software (we use Ability EASE), or through DDE. They have come out with an Billing Manager 2.0 that one can upgrade to, but it has glitches as well, and so I feel that a new version still needs to be released soon. Its accounting is never exact, due to ADRs, and RAPs that have to be cancelled, but then eventually pay; scenarios that are uncommon but do happen. Therefore, I have to reconcile separately, which can be time consuming. Posting insurance payments can be tricky as well with unusual scenarios as well, such as Medicare Secondary Payments. They continue to make improvements, and I'm waiting for thebilling manager to improve. That being said, it is still much better than other softwares I have worked in.
I wish you could not delete a Face to Face and then bill -- there should be a block of some kind that prevents this from happening. The software won't let you bill without a Face to Face being completed, but then if it gets deleted (by accident) it doesn't let anyone know.
You should invest time into taking a training class before using Epic, but once you get the hang of it the usability features are endless! My favorite part about Epic is how it is automated and "trained" to catch user errors that would typically be missed in normal documentation/charting. This ensures accuracy and eliminates errors.
A dedicated support staff for each module/area is provided by Epic. This is beneficial for points of contact, however, not all support staff are created equal, and there seems to be high turnover in these roles(staff seems to turn over every 1-2 years). This can make it challenging for continuity and quick support resolution as new staff are not as familiar with organization-specific needs, environments, and/or questions.
It's very good. For complex upgrades that I request, they don't obviously get to them immediately, but for all technical issues or training issues they are 100% on target
Epic gives extensive customization options in terms of utility and view. I have found this to be highly useful and efficient EHR as compared to other EHRs we use in our organization.
Our team has used Health Care First, Home Care Home Base, McKesson, and proprietary software, none of which have been able to compare to the benefits of Kinnser. Kinnser is the leader among them all. HealthCare First was terrible for multiple reasons, the most critical being user frustration in the field, and the back-office. It only worked on Internet Explorer, and certain settings had to be modified in order for it to work. Even when everything was done correctly, it still gave our field staff and office staff problems daily. It was cumbersome to schedule, and difficult to manage patients in the software. Even entering an order was complicated. Compared to Home Care Home Base, again, Kinnser is so much easier to use in the field, and in the office. I selected Kinnser for my employees to have something easy to chart in, but have been so happy with all the multiple additional benefits from having the leader in the industry as my software company
It must have had a positive impact as things get done quicker, leading to easier billing/coding. It must be saving a lot of money and time. I am not aware of a better product.
