CTCA Innovates CMS Interoperability Rule, ADT Notification Technology

Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) has unveiled new patient ADT notification technology for compliance with the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule.

The final rule requires healthcare facilities to send direct electronic notifications to alert primary care providers and post-acute care providers once a patient is admitted, discharged, or transferred (ADT) from another facility as a CMS condition of participation.

ADT alerts aim to reduce readmissions, improve provider-to-provider communication, boost post-discharge transitions, and support patients with multiple conditions.

CTCA leveraged technology from MedAllies to create a proprietary solution that meets the CMS condition of participation.

CTCA leveraged its Patient Notification Hub, which brings real-time patient events into a central location, to build a solution that subscribes to any event included in the ADT notification requirements.

The solution seamlessly and securely sends patient event notifications through the Patient Notification Hub in real-time to patients’ known providers, representatives said.

“Through technological innovation that keeps referring providers informed at an event level, we enhance the personalized patient-centered approach to care that CTCA is committed to delivering,” CTCA chief information officer, Jennifer Greenman, said in a public statement.

The patient notification technology solution utilizes cloud-native infrastructure, so CTCA can easily enhance the health IT to meet the industry’s changing needs. For instance, the organization can adapt the solution when regulatory changes require adding or removing patient event types.

To build upon this interoperability solution, CTCA aims to integrate the Patient Notification Hub with its newly released Provider Portal. Referring clinicians within the CTCA network can refer patients through the Provider Portal.

The Provider Portal aims to boost efficiency in the referral process by streamlining communication and collaboration between patients’ CTCA care teams and referring providers. 

Integration with the Patient Notification Hub would allow referring clinicians to automatically receive notifications regarding all clinically relevant information and patient events.

Many healthcare organizations are complying with the CMS interoperability rule’s conditions of participation through direct secure messaging.

DirectTrust facilitated 326 million direct secure messages during the second quarter of 2021, a 130 percent increase from the same time last year, and a 90 percent increase over the first quarter of 2021.

Scott Stuewe, president and CEO of DirectTrust, noted that the company attributes the upsurge in the use of direct secure messaging in part to the many organizations using the health IT standard to satisfy the ADT messaging standard.

Since DirectTrust began tracking transactions in 2014, the vendor has reached nearly 2.6 billion transactions. On average, this is over 109 million transactions per month.

“We’re delighted with the continued steady growth across all DirectTrust metrics, and especially with the significant uptick in Direct Secure Messaging,” Stuewe said in a public statement at the time of the announcement.

Compared with the same period a year ago, the number of people using direct secure messaging has increased by more than 19 percent to over 660,000 consumers. The number of trusted direct addresses also increased by 11 percent (2.7 million addresses total) in Q2 compared to the same time last year.