Is Your Hospice Agency Constantly Performing IDT Prep?
An efficient and effective Hospice IDT process is essential to ensure core care teams can provide and document the required oversight and adjustments to the patient’s care plan while still having time to participate in inpatient care.
Many Hospices have expressed spending 5+ days in research and prep mode before the actual IDT to gather all the necessary information in preparation for their IDT. They also express having spent at least several hours, if not days after the meeting is completed collecting signed orders and employing some form of copy/paste routine to ensure the IDT note is complete. This is particularly impactful when due to census, the Hospice either has more than one IDT or meets once a week for 50% of the census and can result in Hospice staff who are eternally used solely for IDT prep and documentation.
Throughout this blog, we will touch on what IDT is and why having efficient software brings the best care to your patients.
What is IDT in Hospice?
IDT stands for Interdisciplinary Team. Some regions refer to it as an IDG or Interdisciplinary Group, but the concept is consistent regardless of the acronym utilized. The hospice IDT was created to ensure the plan of care is evaluated and modified at a frequency of not more than every 15 days to ensure the patient receives appropriate care for their current disease state. During this time, all the team members use their knowledge and expertise to review the patient’s hospice care to date and suggest and implement any necessary changes. The core members of the team are the physician, RN, social worker, and spiritual counselor. These members can be joined by other disciplines needed to help direct the care, such as volunteers, therapists, dieticians, etc.
The members of the Hospice IDT work together to address the physical, psychosocial, and emotional/spiritual needs of the patient. The patient must accept nursing services as part of the Hospice Benefit, but other assistance types are optional and vary from patient to patient.
Having software that works with your hospice teams to collect and present information regarding the patient’s current status and future goals readily available will allow your IDT to efficiently determine the most comprehensive and efficacious care for your patients. And through that efficiency, be available to other key tasking within your Hospice.
How KanTime Hospice Software Works with Our IDT Staff
Having dedicated team members is essential; however, inefficient software can hinder the process significantly. The Agency Management Software, or EMR, needs to work FOR the teams, not the other way around. Some key highlights of KanTime’s Hospice EMR, proven to facilitate an efficient IDT process, are listed below:
- KanTime’s configurable automation can eliminate IDT prep work.
- KanTime IDT is ready the moment you start the meeting.
- Wasted hours researching documentation completed during the IDT period and copy/pasting into the IDT screens/notes is unnecessary in KanTime.
- IDT relevant information is identified during the initial assessment, presented during follow-up visits, and flown to the IDT notes and screens.
- As each patient is reviewed, in turn, their hyperlinks are included to access the entire patient record.
- All Physician Orders can be signed before, during, or at the end of the meeting in bulk or individually, depending on Physician preference.
- KanTime agencies express that IDT meetings are efficient working meetings completed in one afternoon and often in as little as 3 hours.
- The clinician can make updates to the care plan during IDT by writing orders, changing frequencies, etc., without ever leaving the IDT meeting.
- Agency can configure additional templates to ensure capture of any extra relevant information not pushed into the IDT automatically.
- All participating disciplines are prompted to document and weigh in with everything that is going on with the patient on their individual section of the IDT note.
- Agencies have the flexibility of setting hard or soft stops on comments in the notes section as they deem appropriate to their internal processes.
Why It’s Important
Hospice care is often an extremely complex and dynamic challenge for any organization to manage because it comprises a broad array of physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs. Realizing the best possible outcomes for patients and their families facing a life-limiting illness is an around-the-clock event. It requires access to an EMR like KanTime that can enhance the IDT and patient care process at all levels.
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