Sava, Signature Leaders Say Tech Investment is Crucial to Redesigning Long-Term Care

Post-acute care clinicians are looking to workflow technology to help with frontline burnout in an effort to redesign clinical care and erase redundancies along the care continuum.

Tech investment and implementation is broken down by the “need of the hour,” as Signature HealthCARE chief medical officer Dr. Arif Nazir puts it, with infection control and COVID-19 management top of mind, followed by technologies to improve overall quality of care and further innovation in the aging services industry.

Remote patient monitoring and telehealth-related initiatives, Nazir said, along with eliminating documentation duplication and automating infection control practices, are top tech investments for Louisville, Ky.-based Signature HealthCARE.

Nazir spoke at Skilled Nursing News’ Clinical Executive Summit last Tuesday, along with Sava Senior Care chief nursing officer Tony Costa.

Nazir mentioned the operator’s use of BASE10 Infection Control as an example, a software platform developed last year to automate COVID-19 data entry by pulling from electronic medical records (EMR) and tracking infected residents in-house, in real time.

“We can take away all those tests from the staff and automate them using technology,” Nazir explained. “Nothing is off the table … if we miss this opportunity to get motivated and totally redesign long-term care then we would have missed a big opportunity.”

Signature’s “virus mitigation solution package,” according to Nazir, also includes shoe cleaner sanitizers and ultraviolet devices to clean the air.

Costa said Atlanta-Ga.-based Sava is implementing technology with vital sign cards that integrate directly into its EMR, investing in scales and other equipment to import a resident’s weight and other vitals in order to eliminate steps for the operator’s nursing teams.

Visitor screening technology gives more time back to frontline staff, Costa added.

“Staffing is such a key issue, and will be our number one priority throughout the pandemic,” noted Costa. “While there’s only so much we can do to drive more staff into the buildings, what are those things that we can be doing in order to make our organizations more efficient, or processes more streamlined, in order to give the time back in meaningful ways to our centers, and to our team?”

Streamlining through technology is one of Sava’s primary focuses going into 2022, Costa said.

“The problem with the nursing home industry and geriatric in general is that investment of our time and our intellect and our resources has been limited in geriatric innovation,” added Nazir. “Organizations like Sava and Signature have to be part of a bigger solution here.”

Signature, along with 12 other aging services organizations out of Kentucky, has created the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council (LHCC), as a hub in aging innovation, Nazir said.

The group in September acquired AI platform Aging 2.0 and has partnered with the University of Louisville to study innovative technologies. LHCC launched an aging services startup too, which gathers information about a resident’s family and compiles it into a newsletter.