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t is no secret that nurses comprise the backbone of a successful long-term care facility, or that it can be difficult for them to complete all of their administrative tasks and still give all they can to residents. Among the pressures facing nurses is a responsibility to talk to all levels of staff as principal caregivers and documenters.
       “That process puts the nurses at the center of a vast communications web, for which they are expected to execute all of their tasks, every shift, every time, and then document it all accurately,” says Rich Giddings of Achieve Healthcare Technologies™, Eden Prairie, Minn. “Our goal was to make it easier for them.”
       Enter the Achieve Matrix®, a Web-based solution designed to manage the long-term care facility’s resident, clinical, and business operations. The easy-to-use workflow improvement tool features electronic health records, business intelligence tools, and information technology (IT) services. The product gives physicians online access to resident information and order sign-off ability, maintains survey data in realtime, and sends out-of-range vital sign alerts to physicians and nurses, among other features.
       “We wanted to develop software that fundamentally made a difference in long-term care. The industry’s previous software all did the same thing; you could do billing and submit Minimum Data Sets (MDS) but not much more. We were looking to go well beyond that, to facilitate and automate communication and build a documentation trail, piece by piece, as it occurs.”
       To assess the long-term impact of Matrix, Achieve partnered with the Mildred and Shirley L. Garrison Geriatric Education and Care Center (Lubbock, Tex), the Sears-Methodist Retirement System (Abilene, Tex), and Texas Tech University Health Sciences (Odessa, Tex) to conduct a 1-year study of the product; a sample population of 30 registered and licensed nurses took part in the study. The study’s findings suggest that Matrix helps decrease nursing turnover, patient fall, and hospitalization rates while simplifying the facility’s daily workflow.
       “The main thing nurses like about it is that they get their work done in less time,” says Giddings, “which gives them more time to give care to patients. That’s to everyone’s advantage.”
       The study demonstrated a relationship between IT and the quality of care for patients living in long-term care facilities. By cutting the number of steps required to complete daily work processes, the software increases job satisfaction for nurses and therefore curbs staff turnover, the study suggests.
       Administrators will find the software helpful to manage facilities, says Giddings. “Most information systems available to management staff don’t provide them the useful data necessary to take a proactive approach to managing their business,” he says. “We wanted to give them a tool to get them out ahead of their business.”
       Achieve Matrix is still a relatively new product, says Giddings, to which new features will be added. The company is committed to improving the product through various upgrades like integrating a point-of-care element.
       “We want our customers to have the best and most effective technology in the market,” says Giddings. “Our goal is to move this industry forward.”
       For more information, visit http://www.achievehealthcare.com.