North Miami, Florida — August 28, 2020 — Carevive Systems, a North Miami-based health technology company that builds software solutions for cancer centers, announces its transition to 100% virtual deployment of its cancer care management platform. Since the novel coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic began, Carevive has helped four different cancer centers, located in four different states across the U.S., successfully implement its evidence-based treatment and survivorship care planning and remote symptom monitoring solutions—remotely and safely—without putting patients, care teams, or Carevive personnel at unnecessary risk of exposure.
With Covid-19 disrupting the entire healthcare industry and causing devastating delays in diagnosis and treatment, patients and caregivers continually weigh the potential risks of exposure to the virus against the known risks associated with delays in cancer treatment. The four centers—Banner Health in Arizona, Billings Clinic in Montana, Charleston Area Medical Center in West Virginia, and St. John’s Medical Center in Wyoming—began with differing resources and technology needs. However, all four cancer centers shared a common goal of keeping their patients’ cancer treatments on track, while avoiding unnecessary visits that put these already vulnerable patients at increased risk of exposure to Covid-19.
While improving health outcomes for cancer patients is Carevive’s primary focus, the company’s technology focus enabled it to pivot quickly and change the way they do business.
How has Carevive’s model changed?
Prior to the pandemic, Carevive was implementing its solution using a hybrid model—approximately 20% on-site at the client’s location and 80% remote implementation. Now, to help reduce potential exposure to the coronavirus, Carevive is delivering the same highly valued, personalized service and attention through a 100% virtual, contact-free implementation.
“Transitioning to 100% virtual deployment was a relatively rapid and natural progression for us,” says Carevive Senior Project Manager Paula Gundrum. “One of the key benefits we have experienced is the flexibility it provides. Our end users are extremely busy clinicians whose schedules can change in an instant. We now have more flexibility to change meetings times to accommodate their schedule while meeting the deadlines of the project.”
Carevive had already developed the Learning Management System (LMS) for delivering web-based continuing medical education programs. Using the same distance-learning tools and techniques, Carevive developed a suite of online resources specifically designed to facilitate remote implementation of its platform.
Despite social distancing guidelines discouraging on-site meetings, Carevive still values real-time, two-way discussions that are especially critical during the Kickoff, Discovery, and Go Live phases. Video conferencing tools embedded in the LMS facilitate these discussions and enable question-and-answer sessions as needed.
LMS Tools Support Virtual Implementation
Carevive is rapidly expanding its suite of digital tools to accommodate busy oncology care teams and their need to complete training anytime, anywhere, at their own pace. Among the features and benefits of Carevive’s LMS are:
- A library of brief training videos organized into separate modules for administrators, care providers, and technology teams. Each video provides step-by-step instructions on specific tasks, such as how to assign a survey, how to create a care plan, or how to use the Carevive Dashboard to inform symptom management and survivorship care planning.
- Carevive’s LMS can assign entire modules or individual videos to each end-user, customizing training experience based on the specific tasks for which a user is responsible. Trainees can go back and refresh their knowledge at any time—a valuable advantage over live training sessions.
- Interactive quizzes and active-learning exercises complement training videos to enhance engagement and allow users to self-assess their own learning.
- Tools within the LMS allow Carevive and customers to track the completion of training activities and to measure and report training outcomes.
- Carevive continues to provide synchronous one-on-one or small group training sessions to ensure super users are prepared to provide at-the-elbow support to their colleagues during and after the platform Go Live.
- Carevive’s support desk responds to emails (support@carevive.com) and requests users submit via a support button embedded within the Carevive platform.
Why implement the Carevive platform during a pandemic?
Even among otherwise healthy individuals, Covid-19 spreads easily and can cause significant morbidity and mortality. Covid-19 poses an even greater risk to already immunocompromised patients, including those who are on chemotherapy or other anticancer treatments. Thus, the pandemic has made it more critical than ever for cancer centers to have systems in place to remotely monitor patient symptoms and triage patient care to reduce the number of unnecessary visits and avoid potential exposure to the coronavirus.
“Billings Clinic is thrilled to have the Carevive platform integrated into our systems, and virtual implementation was practically seamless,” says Jeannine M. Brant, PhD, APRN-CNS, AOCN, FAAN, an oncology clinical nurse specialist, pain consultant, and nurse scientist for Billings Clinic in Montana. Dr. Brant added “The pandemic is heightening the fear and uncertainty patients with cancer experience. Carevive’s ePROs [electronic patient-reported outcomes] empower patients with information to manage minor symptoms at home and provide real-time data to help our care teams identify and follow up on potential problems.”
Reducing potential exposure by eliminating unnecessary office, clinic, or hospital visits, and facilitating care team access to information that helps make clinic visits more efficient is a double win in the battle against Covid-19.
About Carevive
Carevive Systems, founded in 2013, is an oncology-focused health technology company dedicated to understanding and improving the cancer patient experience. Our platform enables providers to deliver better quality cancer care, and patients to be more engaged in their treatment, which will improve survival outcomes. Use of Carevive in the clinic unlocks critical data on the real-world cancer patient experience to continuously improve patient care today and provide better access to novel therapies in the future.
For more information, please visit https://www.carevive.com or follow us @carevive.
