Signature Sleep Services (dba Sleep960) will introduce a new sleep medicine delivery platform aimed at improving the patient’s complete care cycle, while reducing the overall workload and increasing revenues of diagnostic and therapy providers.
Named SleepLinkz, this platform is comprised of a consortium of vendors that offer a number of products working together to exchange patient information and associated files, thus eliminating redundant data entry. It also includes new software applications developed specifically to increase patient referrals, tackle insurance obstacles, manage therapy more efficiently, provide live PAP coaching, and track clinical outcomes.
The platform was constructed to provide the key elements required for each phase of the care cycle. It begins with SleepScreener, an application that screens and refers patients with major sleep disorders. Next, they are passed to ZConvert for pre-authorizations and scheduling for home sleep testing with ZWare or PSG with Galaxy. If PAP therapy is required, they are transferred into the ManageMyCPAP application and on to CPAPCoach if live coaching is required. Insomnia patients can also be referred on to Internet CBT-I therapy with SleepTutor. A final application, ZOutcomes, gathers key metrics and tracks patient outcomes. The platform billing and collections management is provided by the ZirMed suite of applications.
“During the planning phase of this project, we determined there could be up to 50 individual ‘touch points’ during the complete care cycle with exposure to 12 different software applications and devices, thus resulting in the redundant data entry of over 500 fields of information,” says Michael Clark, VP of sales and business development. “Compounding the problem is that because most of these applications and devices did not communicate with one another, there was no easy way to collect and exchange valuable information used to monitor treatment and track patient outcomes. So the real challenge was to pull all the pieces of the puzzle together and, at the same time, make sure they could connect with each other.”
Presently, the SleepLinkz consortium consists of 10 independent vendors that bring 15 different applications, devices, and services to the table. They share open application programming interfaces (API) allowing communication between individual components, thus eliminating redundant data entry.
SleepLinkz will be officially introduced at the SLEEP960 meeting in Baltimore on June 3, 2013.
