Care Coordination Toolkit

According to the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHQR), care coordination involves purposefully organizing patient care activities and sharing information among all involved parties to ensure safer and more effective healthcare.

The main aim is to fulfill patients' needs and preferences, ensuring that this information is communicated to the right people at the right time for the delivery of safe, appropriate, and effective care. [1]

To provide these services to patients care coordinators often have to keep track of notes, patient data, appointments, conversations, etc. In this blog, we’ll review what’s needed as part of the Care Coordination Toolkit so you can best equip your care coordinators.

Collecting patient information is typically done through various intake forms or surveys. To collect this data in a more structured way, it’s ideal to use a HIPAA-compliant digital form builder rather than a fillable PDF or Pen and Paper.

Example Form Builder Toolers: Formsort, Google Forms (Workspace), JotForm, TypeForm, Tellescope

For care coordinators to keep track of what patients tell them on a call so that they can remember key personal, medical, and family details, it’s important to take thorough notes. To stay organized it’s helpful to use a HIPAA-compliant note-taking tool.

Example Note-Taking Tools: Google Docs (Workspace), One Note, Simple Practice, Tellescope

As a care coordinator, it’s vital to keep track of what needs to be done for patients so that nothing slips through the cracks. Because of that, it’s important to have a task management solution in place.

Example Note-Taking Tools: Google Docs (Workspace), One Note, Simple Practice, Tellescope

A major component of care coordination is communication. To coordinate care, care coordinators need to be able to effectively communicate with patients, practices, and any other stakeholders involved with patient care.

Example Patient Communication Tools: Spruce Health, Klara, OHMD, Tellescope

In many situations, multiple care coordinators will be involved in resolving issues and completing tasks for a patient. Because of that, care coordinators need to be able to stay in sync about patient-related matters and communicate with each other in real-time.

Example Internal Team Communication Tools: Slack, Teams, Tiger Connect, Tellescope

Coordinating appointments is inevitably one of the key requirements for care coordination. Many times this is calling external providers, scheduling on the patient's behalf, and keeping track of their appointments. But many times, this can also consist of scheduling time for scheduling calls with the patients and their loved ones

Example Scheduling Tools: Cal.com, Nylas, Acuity Scheduling, Tellescope

Being able to track the status of each patient and ensuring they’re receiving regular check-ins and follow-ups is important to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks and that care coordinators are proactively uncovering any potential issues before they arise.

Example Tools to Track Follow-ups: SalesForce Health Cloud, ZenDesk, Tellescope

If you want to have one place to manage your care coordination experience, Tellescope’s HIPAA-compliant CRM provides coordinators with a centralized, streamlined, and automated platform. Fill out the form below to learn how Tellescope can help your business.