Webinar: A Paperless World for Senior Living

 

A paperless workday for your team. Interested in how we can make it possible? 

We'd love to discuss with you how ElderForms can work at your community.  Let's get a personalized demonstration scheduled for you!

 

Webinar Transcript

Mark Anderson:

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's Leadership Forum webinar for January 11th. Happy to have you join us for this month's webinar as part of our leadership forum series. I am your host, Mark Anderson, Chief Client Officer with Eldermark, and I will also be one of the presenters today, in addition to our invited guests. So happy to have you with us. For those of you that might be new to our Leadership Forum webinar series, just a little bit about this, the purpose of this forum webinar series is for us to connect as leaders in the senior living business line to learn, share, and support each other. So we have these webinars once a month. Almost always, it's the first Wednesday of the month, but with the holidays conflicting and things this month, we are not on the first Wednesday, but we'll resume our first Wednesday schedule, resuming that in February.

And so these are held to help us learn about different technology solutions that can help us achieve our goals as leaders within senior living, for us to share information and helpful resources relevant to our work, and perhaps even bring in some timely current event issues that may pop up from time to time, and, again, most importantly, to support each other in our work. Just a few notes before we begin our presentation today. All of you participants will remain muted during the webinar. We ask that you would use the question feature on the webinar control panel to submit your questions, and then we will address those as time permits. Questions are welcome throughout the webinar, so feel free please to put those in the question feature. Once we adjourn, shortly after, you will receive a link to the recording of this webinar, so watch your email for that. And you may share that with your colleagues as you like.

And of course, you're always welcome to contact any of us who are presenters in this webinar series directly via email. All right, so today's topic, we are going to take a look at ElderForms. This is a new technology that we are working with, and the solution here is providing that paperless world for our senior living customers to help you save time and simplify your work processes. And so joining me today is Matthew Moore, President at WorldView. Thanks, Matt, for being a part of today. Really appreciate you joining me and helping us to share this information about ElderForms.

Matt Moore:

Absolutely. Thank you, Mark. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to join you today.

Mark Anderson:

And so Matt and I are going to cover a lot of territory, but in a fairly short amount of time. We want to help our participants today understand the partnership that Eldermark has with WorldView in providing the ElderForms solution. We're going to take a look at the current state of paper and forms management in senior living, of course discuss this value of going paperless, kind of obvious in a way these days, take a little deeper look into what ElderForms can offer our senior living business line customers, and certainly save some time for some questions from our participants as we go on. And so Matt, why don't you kick us off?

Matt Moore:

Perfect. Yeah. So everyone, thank you again for your time today. WorldView is a workflow process automation company that focuses on assisting healthcare organizations improve their resident care by really allowing more time to be spent on true business impacting initiatives and less time on manual and mundane tasks. At WorldView, I like to say that we're efficiency junkies, and we truly love to solve business problems. In fact, I like to say that there's not a business problem that we can't solve. And in fact, for the last 22 years, we've been creating efficiencies through a combination of document management software, process automation, and integration into other softwares, such as Eldermark. We know that implementing technology is just the start of our focus. And as we know best in class, customer service is just as important to our clients, so that is one of our key pillars of WorldView. And because we've had the opportunity to serve several industries and markets, we have a great and in-depth understanding of what makes a great user experience to allow for the greatest adoption, while also ensuring all of our solutions are as secure and compliant as possible.

We are extremely excited about this partnership, everyone, with Eldermark and are proud to join our forces together to bring a brand new and what seems to be a much needed solution to really digitize your onboarding process. We realize how much time and effort it takes for you to bring on your residents, and we're really here to make that process as simple and easy as possible. We are in the early stages of our partnership, but we already have a very extensive roadmap to continue enhancing ElderForms, which we're talking through today, and ElderCharts, which is kind of a secondary solution that's tied to ElderForms. I will also be giving you some insight into, as well today. So with that, Mark, I'll push it back to you.

Mark Anderson:

Great, thank you. We share in the excitement of the partnership Matt. So where does ElderForms fit in? Well, this diagram, we call it here at ElderMark the seven circles, and this is kind of a diagram of how our technology solutions serve our customers, as they serve their resident customers. And so our systems help support our customers all the way from when they start that relationship with a prospective senior living resident, all the way through their residency in your community, sending out the invoice at the end of the month, connecting that with the financials, and then looking at different data reports and analytics to help understand how the business is performing. Well, ElderForms fits in kind of at the beginning of the process. So a lot of what we're going to talk about today is right at this beginning of your relationship with your customers where you're managing all that move in paperwork, the lease, the disclosure forms, and all those other papers that are required to become part of that resident record.

And so we'll take a high-level look today at how going paperless can help you with document management and eliminating as much paper as possible, making things simpler, reducing costs, and how you don't have to change the forms you're using 'cause this system will use the forms that are familiar and important and/or required within your business practices. So certainly, eliminating paper based forms is going to save time. We think about that stack of move in paperwork. To be able to automate some of those processes also saves time. And of course, there's a component here in improving your compliance or supporting your compliance efforts through a complete audit trail that Matt will address when he gets in a little bit deeper to the information.

And in using your forms, what ElderForms can do through the WorldView technology is it's configurable to your needs. So they streamline things through using your forms or customized forms, and then within those forms they can add alpha numeric data fields or check boxes or data fields for dates or anywhere you need an electronic signature or the initials of the customer or the responsible party and other similar uses on the forms as well. And then of course, these digitized documents, they are set up for that electronic signature. Super easy. Some of you are probably already using some type of technology out there for digital signatures. When these documents are sent securely to the signer or you have the resident or responsible party sign with a stylist or finger on a touchscreen there in the sales office, super easy to do here within this system on any document that you digitize where you would need, say, a signature or initials on the form.

And then standardizing all your forms certainly helps with consistency and accountability. I know some of the customers we're working with right now with ElderForms, one of the side benefits is that it is forcing them to truly look at all their paperwork and make things more standardized across their portfolio and across their systems, so being able to take those standardized forms, digitize them for use so that they are consistent not only with maybe regulatory requirements, but also so that they are aligned with your internal policies and procedures. Some customers are currently using cloud storage that Eldermark offers, and part of what is included with our work with ElderForms is the ElderCharts system. Matt will introduce that as well. So it's kind of an alternative option for our customers to decide which one makes for the best use case for them.

And the return on investment, we like to be able to demonstrate that there is more than just the expense of a new software or new product or a new system. The return on investment is immediate and sustained with something like ElderForms. We've estimated that a customer can save around $450 a month in paper and toner and time spent standing at the copy machine and things like that. But I think more importantly, you get a faster turnaround with that forms completion, and it's a real convenience for your senior living customers or their responsible parties to be able to review the forms at their own time, say, if it comes to their email and really spend the time going over them before electronically signing and sending them back.

We're also hearing from current users that they are saving over 50% of the time it takes to manage that move in paperwork process especially. And so of course, the payoff there is now you've got more face time with your residents or your resident customers rather than going through all that paperwork. I remember as a former senior living operator, the hours that it would take to go through all those papers and then making paper copies afterward for the resident or responsible party to keep in their own systems. And so reducing that labor cost and operating cost, absolutely a return on that investment right away.

Security as well, the lesser need for physical storage space. You're not sending protected health information through standard email or unsecured systems, and you can also offer access and sharing to those who have the authority to have access to these kinds of documents, so safety and security is also a great benefit on the side. And before I turn things over to Matt, I just want to back up a second. I just want to say, I mean, I remember, and I'll bet that we have some participants on the webinar today who maybe have shared this experience, but I remember as an operator where we had a lot of paper forms and things that we had to keep due to retention guidelines, so we had bankers boxes full of paper forms and labeled boxes stacked up in closets, and some of our facilities even had so much they had to have offsite storage.

And then if you needed to find something, that was fun. If you got a request for information from an old record to try to find that information, it was a nightmare. And I think what you learn today about this kind of solution will really do a lot to help alleviate all those pains of papers, forms, and bankers boxes and storing things in closets that maybe you could use for other things. Because I remember too as an operator, space was always at a premium. So if you could empty a closet and use it for something else, that was handy. Matt.

Matt Moore:

Perfect. Well, and just to kind of sum everything up that Mark just so wonderfully spoke about and everyone, the value of ElderForms. It's really to digitize your entire process. It helps reduce some costs from many facets, empowers your team with more time so you can truly spend it on those business impacting strategies, and streamline security and compliance efforts for sure across the board.

Go ahead and head to the next one here, Mark. So as we give insight into kind of what the solution looks like, the intent of today's conversation isn't necessarily to give you a full on demo. And in fact, we actually want the call to action today to be for you to reach out and to get a more in-depth demonstration at the end of this, but we wanted to give some insight into what it looks and it feels like to give you that pure representation as you get into the solution itself. And what I really want all of you to leave this webinar with is just this fact that I'm about to talk about here. The brilliant part of this solution is that we handle all of the heavy lifting for your organization. We realize you have extremely important strategic objectives that you're trying to hit, and we do our best to keep this process as simple and easy as possible for you.

So WorldView is going to work with Eldermark to gather all of your onboarding forms for all of your locations. And as Mark mentioned, standardization is not required, but it is definitely recommended during this process, and this is a great opportunity to ensure all of your locations are using the correct forms where it makes sense. Through making your forms digital, we really have several data types that Mark kind of went through and several automation tools that we use and leverage to help streamline your process. As I mentioned before, we're kind of in the early stages of our partnership and our integration, so what you see today is not the experience that you're going to be getting 12, 18, 24 months from now either.

Today, we're going to allow you to freeform text fields and to fill in the information on the form. But in the future, our vision is to have a built-in integration to pull these fields directly from Eldermark. So today, we're going to auto-populate similar fields. So for example, you only have to type in a resident name one single time, and then we're, basically with our smart functionality, we're going to be able to apply that same field to the rest of those fields that are appropriate. We also have the ability to create dropdowns, as Mark mentioned, we have date pickers, and it really gives you a little bit more control in the fields and avoid mistakes and non-standard information. We realize that you guys are probably using this information in several systems, so consistency is really key here to make sure that one person is not entering the information just slightly different from others. And so all of these tools really give you that ability to really control this flow and this process to the best of your abilities.

Mark Anderson:

Matt, I have a question on the date stamp. Once somebody signs this as you see here, is the date, like autopopulated dates, timestamped?

Matt Moore:

Yeah, that's a great question, Mark. So we do have that functionality and logic on the backend to set that up to autopopulate that. If it's not something you want to automatically populate, it'll actually pull up more of a calendar view for you to be able to click a date or select a date. And we also have just the freeform fields where you can just type in the date itself. Depending on what your business process is and what you'd like to see, WorldView can work with your team to create those fields exactly the way that your business process is.

Mark Anderson:

Great, thank you. That was a question from the field, so thank you for that.

Matt Moore:

Absolutely. And let's go ahead and move on here. And so this is an example where you can see that we also have the ability to include calculations. So you no longer really have to pull out calculators as you're working on building the relationship with your residents. Really, a lot of this is just additional insight into the logic that we can build in. This is a very easy and simple formula that you have here, but it can get very complex, and we actually have some forms that are very, very, very complicated. So again, like I said before, there's really not a business problem that we can't solve for you, and we're always up for the challenge there.

Mark Anderson:

I like that this does the math for you because that total there, that needs to be correct because that's a contract, so you want it to be accurate.

Matt Moore:

Absolutely. Let's keep moving here. Form attachments. Perfect. So we have the ability to basically create an electronic version of your form that's not the exact form in a paper form, and the purpose of this is really to give you the ability to attach additional information or documentation to these forms. We realize there's a lot of required information that's not just information you're filling out at the time that you're going through a resident onboarding process, like the power of attorney, court order, legal documents. These are all attachments that you guys have to track and keep accounting of, and we give you a simple and easy way to, hey, this is still all of... the wording of the actual form itself and give you an easy way to attach a power of attorney. You can see those attached buttons on the bottom right.

And the brilliant part of this, guys, is all of this is going to be flowing to ElderCharts, which we'll see in just a second here. And without you having to do anything. You're no longer having to print, save, store, and then to go back and try and retrieve all this and try and remember everything that you put together. WorldView takes care of all of that for you on the backend. Let's keep moving here. Perfect. And so this gives you a little bit of insight into what ElderCharts will look like. So again, the brilliant part of this, guys, is this is all automated and dynamic on the backend. As you're finished filling in all the documentation that's required as part of this onboarding process, it will automatically be filed and stored based off of the resident that you have in front of you, which makes it very easy to retrieve later on and gives you a very clear and concise picture of what you have included into that chart for that resident and what's missing.

So you can see the example on the bottom left there that this was missing a specific document. It's highlighted in red. So as you go through your audits and compliance type of processes, it's very easy for you to run reports that say, "These residents are missing these types of documents." Let's go ahead and move on from here, Mark. Perfect. And really at the end of this guys, again, from end to end, WorldView tries to take care and automate as much of this as possible. In future phases, we do actually plan to add an easy button inside Eldermark to make ElderCharts accessible as easy as possible. So today, you will have to sign into the WorldView solution to view all of those ElderCharts. But in the future vision, basically as we expand the integration, you'll basically be able to click a button inside of Eldermark that will automatically pull up that ElderCharts screen that's based off of the context of the resident that you have pulled up in there.

So that's kind of just a very basic high level in overview of what ElderForms and ElderCharts gives you. Of course, if you guys do have further questions, we would love to do a very in-depth demonstration for you, even get some of your forms so you can see exactly what that looks like inside the system. For that, please do contact Eldermark. They are leading the sales process for us, and we can definitely get you scheduled for some time for an in-depth demonstration.

Mark Anderson:

Great, thank you, Matt. So a couple questions have come in. The first is, what kind of format do my forms need to be in for ElderForms to digitize them?

Matt Moore:

That's a great question. And really, we can take really any type of format. So Word documents and PDFs are the most standard forms that we usually get, but we take really any form that you can give us and we can digitize that for you.

Mark Anderson:

Okay. Because I know one of the things that people are concerned about, and I bet maybe it might be part of this behind this question is some states require very specific forms to be used. I mean, it has to be the state form.

Matt Moore:

Sure.

Mark Anderson:

And so you're able to digitize those exactly the way the state requires, yes?

Matt Moore:

Absolutely.

Mark Anderson:

Okay. Here's another question that's come in, how are orders from physicians received? And I'm guessing maybe this person can add a little comment or another comment within the question field, and that is, I think what they may be getting at is perhaps in ElderCharts being able to store other things, other documents from other sources. Maybe you could address that.

Matt Moore:

Yeah, absolutely. So the dynamic autocreation of the resident chart is all done based on the onboarding process, but the reality is you guys are really getting a full document management solution as part of ElderForms. So it does not necessarily keep you from storing other types of documentation as part of that ElderChart for that specific resident, but today there's no automation to bring those in. We will give you the ability to upload and store other types of documents and document types as well though. That was a great question.

Mark Anderson:

Okay, so I could kind of keep a file library there of my residents, and then, to that question, I could add physician orders in a PDF format or mail orders or even things like a post or durable power of attorney for healthcare, things like that.

Matt Moore:

Yes sir. Yeah, the intent here is that we can really start to replace that cloud storage, which is a solution I think that everybody has kind of been looking for at this point. We know that cloud storage does serve a purpose, but we're trying to bring much more functionality and value from ElderCharts to give you guys a one-stop shop there.

Mark Anderson:

Sure. And great questions coming in. Is this a web-based system or does it require access to remote a desktop?

Matt Moore:

It will not require access through remote desktop. It is a web-based solution.

Mark Anderson:

So I'm going to add a little bit more color to that. And that is, yeah, currently that's the setup. Eldermark under its current platform is a remote desktop access. For those of you who are customers, if you've been paying attention to our promotional stuff over the last many months, we are modernizing Eldermark platform and moving everything to the web. And so to Matt's comments earlier, once that is achieved, then our goal is to create that full integration with ElderForms so that ElderForms will just be a function within the Eldermark platform, just like you would access a report or pull down a form from a resident record or things like that, so kind of a seamless connectivity if you will, to the functionality of ElderForms once we've launched the web-based modernized product later this year. So FYI on that. Getting back, Matt, to the question on physician orders, I think what this question is getting at is physician orders that are received by fax that are currently being scanned and stored in the cloud, how would ElderForms be different than that?

Matt Moore:

Yeah. So that's a wonderful question, and I don't know that we've necessarily focused on that specific functionality. We do, by the way, have orders automation processes for other industries, such as home health and hospice, that I think we can probably very quickly spin up a solution that would apply and solve that business problem too.

Mark Anderson:

So kind of like a secure eFax functionality.

Matt Moore:

Yeah. So we have the ability to sweep in all kinds of different types of transportation methods. We know that fax is very widely spread used in the healthcare market, and we actually have the ability to forward fax lines to our servers, and it would basically automatically come in and allow you to store those within there. It depends on the process and what you'd like to see there. But whoever's asking this question, I'd love to hop on a call and pull that thread a little bit more and better understand your business problem that you're trying to solve there for sure.

Mark Anderson:

Okay. I tell you what, I will make a note of that question asker. And they have already indicated they would like to get on a call, so we will follow up with you. Thank you very much, participant, for the questions and we'll do a followup with you. And then another question. I love all these questions, this is great. Let's see, and maybe we kind of got at this, but maybe just explain a little bit more about the security aspect, I guess, of how documents move from ElderForms out to the responsible party and then back again.

Matt Moore:

Yeah, another great question. So we kind of almost skipped over that, didn't we, the actual signature portion. So we do allow for signatures right there in front of you via whatever mechanism, an iPad, whatever it is. But if the person is not right there in front of you, we do have a HIPAA compliant automation tool that is an e-signature portal that we would actually send to whoever the participants or whoever the required signatures that you can use at this point. So it's a separate portal. Imagine a DocuSign specific for long-term care is what this is. And it's all HIPAA compliant again. Nothing that you need to worry about from a security or compliance standpoint either.

Mark Anderson:

Great, thank you for that. And so we've had lots of interest on participants today coming in, a couple more questions and expressed interest about storing doctor's orders and using an eFax feature. Participants indicating that that would be very helpful and so on. So here's an interesting question, can these documents include a logo?

Matt Moore:

Absolutely, yeah. We can basically include all of your logos. Exactly as they look today, that is our intent to make them... As long as you're not trying to make attachments, that's when we have to create more of a digital form. It doesn't look and feel exactly the way your form is today. But as long as you like it to be a digital form, we can include and make it look exactly the way it looks today.

Mark Anderson:

Yeah. So really, is it fair to say that in whatever format a customer's paper form is now, it's as if you made a photocopy of it in ElderForms, except now you can fill in the blanks?

Matt Moore:

You got it.

Mark Anderson:

Okay. I think just to kind of clarify that for everybody that you guys aren't literally retyping in the form, you're literally digitizing how that form looks right now into the system, right?

Matt Moore:

That's right. Yeah, and the intent there is to make this process as simple and easy. So we don't want your reps to have to learn new forms, the intent is really to make this very intuitive. They know exactly what the fields they need to fill in at this point, and we want to make that process very, very similar look and feel wise, but give the automation and the efficiencies by adding some of these data elements and automation tools.

Mark Anderson:

Okay, great. And let's see. Any other questions from participants this afternoon? I had some great questions coming in. I know maybe last call for questions. And for those of you that are interested in, again, a more in-depth look at some of these things like how to manage physician orders and things like that, we can achieve that through a... for experience of a demo with Matt or a member of his team so that you can see for your particular use case, how will this help provide a solution for you? Here's another question. Let's see. Are the forms accessible to both clinical and CRM? And so I'm guessing what the question there is about, who can access use of the systems? And isn't it whoever you grant access to is the answer?

Matt Moore:

Yeah, that's correct. So during the implementation process, we will go through an in-depth kind of users and security session, which basically gives us the ability to tie, hey, if you have certain users that you only want to be able to access forms for certain locations, we can do it based off of that. If you want some individuals to only have read access only, we can do it based off of that. It is a very in depth user administration and securities and permissions model that we can go through.

Mark Anderson:

And again, as we go back to that seven circles, and we look at the primary place of use case for this system, it kind of is in that move in paperwork towards the beginning of the relationship with the resident customer. But down the road too, once we get this integration done, then there will be opportunities to do more with that updated service agreement getting signed off or getting that assessment signed off. I know some states require that their responsible party sign off on the assessment, and that will be a feature in the modernized product that will be available, so there will be expanded use cases certainly later on when that full integration is done. But plenty of use cases immediately available for sure for our customers. There is a question in here about cost. How much do we want to talk about cost outside of the individual circumstances of a customer, Matt?

Matt Moore:

Yeah, I think it's kind of custom to the customer in a lot of ways. A lot of it's depending on the forms and the number of forms. So I think the best answer there would be, hey, hop on a call so we can kind of ask some questions and we can give you extreme clarity into what the pricing model is there.

Mark Anderson:

Yeah, it's kind of unique to the customer, so it's kind of hard to throw something out there and then be held to it. I can say that the response we've received so far is this is affordable, and it's already paying for itself.

Matt Moore:

Absolutely.

Mark Anderson:

And we love it when we can offer a solution to a customer that has that return on investment. I like to say to folks, "Look, we've got to look at technology as beyond an expense, that it's an investment, and then hold your vendor accountable for what that return is or have them help you understand what the return is." I hope we've been able to demonstrate what the return on investment would be today for a feature like ElderForms for sure.

Matt Moore:

And I do think, Mark, efficiency based software, the ROI in a lot of cases is very clear and very easy to quantify in many cases. And we can definitely help with that too.

Mark Anderson:

[inaudible 00:33:08] about would be beneficial for comprehensive assessment with signature service agreements, level of care plan meetings, da, da, da. Yeah. So I think to that particular participant's comment, stay tuned on what we'll be sharing more of here soon this year on the modernization project because we will be getting to all those things mentioned in that last comment. All right. Well, thank you, Matt, so much for being available today and going through this. Obviously, we've created some real interest out there among the participants of this webinar with all the great questions and comments coming in. To me, that's always a really good indicator that we've got people thinking about how whatever we're talking about can help serve their goals, so this is just great. Thank you so much. And then thank you participants today. Really appreciate it. Again, I have a couple names, a few names down here from participants who kind of wanted some follow up.

You can also contact sales@eldermark.com. If you want to contact me directly, it's manderson@eldermark.com. Feel free to drop me a note, and I can connect you with one of my colleagues that can best get at what your needs are. So thank you, Matt. Thank you participants. And our next Leadership Forum webinar is set for February 1st at 12:00 PM Central Time, and a very interesting topic. I have discovered this pet care service that does, believe it or not, they do telehealth, telemedicine visits to the pets of senior living residents. And this service has become so important to social determinants of health that there are three Medicare Advantage plans in the United States that now will help pay for telemedicine health visits, health wellness visits for pets of eligible older adults.

So we're going to talk about that and how to manage pet services in the Eldermark platform on February 1st. Watch for an announcement about that, or you may sign up on our webinar calendar at eldermark.com. Go to resources, webinar calendar, and sign up there. Thank you everybody. Thank you for your good work. And again, Mr. Matt, thank you so much for today.

Matt Moore:

Thank you for the opportunity, Mark.