Why Azalea Is the Best EHR for Rural Providers Right Now
The Rural Health Transformation Program (RHT Program) is underway. States have been awarded funds through 2027 to be used to improve access to quality healthcare in rural areas while supporting the financial challenges rural hospitals and providers face. The program specifies what initiatives the states can use the money for. This article looks at those specific approved initiatives and how the Azalea EHR is the best EHR for rural providers to maximize RHT Program funding.
Approved Uses of RHT Program Funds for State Initiatives
To understand how Azalea Health aligns with RHT Program funds, you need to understand that states are required to use Program funds in three or more of 10 areas.
- Promoting evidence-based, measurable interventions to improve prevention and chronic disease management.
- Providing payments to healthcare providers for health care items or services.
- Promoting consumer-facing, technology-driven solutions for the prevention and management of chronic diseases.
- Providing training and technical assistance (TA) to develop/adopt technology-enabled solutions that improve care delivery in rural hospitals.
- Recruiting and retaining clinical staff who commit to stay in a rural area for five or more years.
- Securing TA, software, and hardware for significant technology advances to improve efficiency, enhance cybersecurity, and improve patient outcomes.
- Assisting rural communities to right-size health care delivery systems through needed preventive, ambulatory, pre-hospital, emergency, acute inpatient, outpatient, and post-acute care services.
- Supporting access to Mental Health, SUD and OUD, opioid use disorder (OUD), substance use disorder (SUD), and mental health treatment and services.
- Developing projects that support innovative models of care, including value-based care arrangements and alternative payment models.
- Adopting or managing sustainable access to right-size high-quality rural health care services.
Azalea Health solutions align to these areas on multiple fronts and give rural providers an ideal, cost-effective way to meet Program goals and report on performance results.
How Azalea Is the Best EHR for Rural Providers Pursuing RHT Program Funding Areas
The Azalea Health EHR system supports rural hospitals and clinics for multiple RHT Program allowable uses. Azalea EHRs are particularly strong for IT modernization, patient-facing technologies, care delivery innovation, and performance measurement. Azalea offers a modernized core technology solution platform. It’s also a strategic partner that can help rural providers make measurable progress toward state and CMS goals.
Here’s a breakdown of how the Azalea EHR solution aligns with eligible use of funds for the RHT Program.
Promoting Evidence-Based, Measurable Interventions
The Azalea EHR includes Azalea Healthcare Analytics that gives hospitals and clinics actionable data analytics and performance management tools. Population health and clinical analytics tools provide real-time and historical insight into:
- Managing gaps-in-care
- Clinical outcomes measurement
- Chronic disease trends
- Utilization patterns
- Clinical quality measures
Azalea Analytics interactive dashboards and reports support evidence-based care plan program design and performance tracking. So rural clinics and hospitals can report to the states and support their states’ ability to measure and track health outcomes.
And through EHR vendor partnerships with remote care management platforms, providers can use the Azalea EHR with a partner integration to track vital patient data outside the clinic and support chronic disease intervention models. A great example is our integrated remote patient monitoring solutions with ChartSpan.
Promoting Consumer-Facing, Technology-Driven Solutions
The Azalea Ambulatory EHR includes Azalea Analytics and Azalea Patient Engagement Software. Rural providers get one platform for integrated population health analytics and a patient portal and engagement tools. The secure myHealthspot patient portal lets rural providers’ patients access their health records, message clinicians, view test results, and engage with patient care plans at any time.
Azalea Patient Engagement Software also includes integrated HIPAA-compliant telehealth capabilities that supports expanding access to preventive and routine care for patients with mobility, location, or transportation barriers.
Regardless of location, patients can monitor their health, talk to providers, and ensure they’re adhering to medication as prescribed and following the best prevention or maintenance protocols.
Eligible providers that choose the Azalea platform will realize improved access to care and empower self-management for their rural patients.
Providing Training and Technical Assistance (TA)
The Azalea EHRs for rural hospitals and rural health clinics are easy to implement. They’re designed to be user friendly. And Azalea provides onboarding and best practice training for rural clinics adopting EHR, telehealth, and analytics tools. And with Azalea, there’s no cut-off to the training cycle. Azalea stays with a provider for as long as needed.
Azalea innovates as well. Its AI-powered solutions complement the patient journey from visit to billing.
- AI Clinical Assistant transcribes encounters in real-time and automatically turns them into more accurate notes. Providers can focus on the patient, not the chart, and go home on time.
- AI Billing Assistant automatically flags errors and prioritizes needed follow-ups. It helps improve first pass billing, reduce burnout and saves hours of manual work.
When rural providers choose Azalea, they get more than a software vendor. They get an ongoing partner they can trust. What’s more, Azalea’s cloud-based solution is fully managed for providers to ease the IT burden for the practice. From implementation to upgrades to ongoing security and backups, Azalea does all the work. There’s no need for added staff or software.
“It was an easier transition than we could have anticipated. There were, and are, horror stories of changed EHRs and not being able to get claims out for six months from other CEOS and CFOs. We were pleasantly surprised that we were still able to turn over claims.”
Securing TA, Software, and Hardware
With Azalea, rural providers access:
- Technical assistance with expert guidance and ongoing support, Azalea helps providers implement, optimize, and maintain health information technology systems, including the Azalea EHR and telehealth with built-in cybersecurity, and data reporting.
- Software, cloud-based systems that improve clinical, operational, and financial performance, including the EHR, revenue cycle tools, population health software, patient engagement platforms, and analytics.
- Cloud-based hardware that eliminates the need for on-site technology to run modern systems reliably — including servers, workstations, networking equipment, telehealth devices, and secure infrastructure. All you need is a browser and secure internet access.
The Azalea cloud-based EHR platform reduces local IT load and increases uptime, scalability, and cybersecurity. Interoperability and data exchange with HIE capabilities deliver a unified one patient, one record platform to support data exchange across care settings. And with cybersecurity and compliance built-in with security controls and automated updates to help rural facilities strengthen data protection.
In the end, Azalea offers a scalable technology foundation that states and providers can build future healthcare improvement initiatives on.
Assisting Rural Communities to Right-Size Their Health Care Delivery Systems
Rural providers can’t know what their communities need without data. And the Azalea EHR with Azalea Analytics gives rural hospitals and clinics easy-to-access data into their population’s health, payer mix, service utilization, visit types and revenue cycle trends. WIth the right data, administrators can more easily implement new service lines or evaluate which service lines are most needed and/or efficient.
Azalea solutions are also uniquely fit for cross-setting data continuity. With Azalea, a single patient record spans ambulatory and hospital care to provide a strong longitudinal view across populations for planning service lines and right-sizing care delivery. Administrators have the insight they need to identify gaps or overlaps in care delivery based on real data. So they can make the right decisions regarding services that best meet community needs.
Supporting Access to OUD, SUD, and Mental Health Services
For rural providers pursuing OUD, SUD and mental health services as part of RHT Program funding, Azalea offers integration capabilities with the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) and medication reconciliation and care management tools. Azalea also offers patient tracking and engagement tools to help providers easily coordinate care for behavioral health and recovery programs.
And Azalea’s integrated telehealth supports easy access to virtual mental health care. For example, remote visits make substance use disorder counseling and follow-up more accessible.
Bottom line: Azalea solutions expand access to and continuity for behavioral health services — a priority area for many rural transformation plans.
Developing Projects that Support Innovative Models of Care
New care models — like moving from fee-for-service to value-based care — require extensive visibility into the patient’s medical journey including past medical history, medical episodes, medications, test performed and results, vitals, chronic illness and current care plans and much more.
Azalea makes that easy with preventative care, population health and clinical analytics for clinical quality and outcomes reporting. With Azalea, gaps in care management, performance measures, and clinical quality dashboards with drill through analysis combine to help rural entities more easily participate and excel in emerging value-based care payment models.
Add Azalea telehealth and remote monitoring support innovation that provide real-time data along with medication adherence updates to implement effective value-based care plans with patient outreach.
With Azalea Health, you access an innovation enabler that lets your facility easily pilot and/or shift to value-based care frameworks supported by data analytics and automation technology.
Recruiting and Retaining Clinical Staff
Rural providers work hard. They work on lean teams with lean resources. The more you can do to reduce their administrative burden, the better. Azalea’s easy to use intuitive solutions with AI-assisted charting reduce workflow burden and free clinician time, which can make rural practice more attractive and sustainable.
In addition, Azalea’s onboarding and training approach creates efficiencies for providers by applying best practices workflows during implementation. Providers enjoy less clicks, less windows to bounce around and a reduced learning curve overall with support services that help new hires (and existing) staff acclimate quickly with surprisingly little effort or time. And Azalea partners with your team for the long haul, not just during onboarding.
Support workforce sustainability by making rural jobs less burdensome and more efficient.
"For the last almost three years now, we’ve had access to the team. They've been on site several times. And the willingness to continue to move the product forward has been great.”
Final Word on Why Azalea Is the Best EHR for Rural Providers for the RHT Program and After
The Azalea Health EHR directly supports the Rural Health Transformation Program by providing the technology foundation that rural providers need to improve access, quality, and sustainability as outlined in program funding requirements.
The Azalea cloud-based EHR, telehealth, and population health with clinical analytics combine to create a modernized and secure technology backbone that supports multiple RHT Program funding priorities — from quality improvement to workforce support and care coordination.
Azalea offers a unified record across hospital and ambulatory settings that satisfies program expectations for data continuity and information exchange, a recurrent theme in RHT Program funding uses.
And the Azalea population health, clinical analytics, and engagement tools can help providers report to states on state-defined clinical quality measures as well as monitor overall progress for each specific initiative. Part of RHT Program requirements are that states report on how funds are used each year. If states don’t follow and report results for their plans, CMS can withhold, reduce, or take back baseline and/or funding if it decides a state hasn’t followed its plan or met its goals. So ongoing measurement, monitoring and reporting are critical. Azalea Health has all the performance management reporting tools uniquely built in, making it the best EHR for Rural Providers for the RHT Program.
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