While digital transformation is rampant across industries, long-term care facilities are stuck in the early aughts, with options for caregivers limited to personal cell phones and other rudimentary devices. Not to mention these caregivers are juggling resident needs, provider communications, and facility activities, leaving little time to showcase their high quality of care to the family members.

Enter Serenity Connect.

Founded in 2019, Serenity Connect brings the family and care team together on a single, secure messaging platform. Serenity has bridged the gap between care teams and family members to establish a foundation of trust from day one. Through a fully secure, HIPAA-compliant platform, Serenity fosters enhanced communication and collaboration between everyone involved in a senior’s care, keeping everyone on the same page. Senior care facilities, families, and providers use Serenity to strengthen relationships between care teams and families, increase provider productivity, improve patient quality, and offer families greater peace of mind regarding their loved ones.

How Serenity Connect Is Spearheading Tech Innovation in Long-Term Care

Serenity has completely revolutionized communication in long-term care facilities. While EHRs alone allow caregivers to capture medications and symptoms, it does little to provide the level of detail a family member is looking for to understand how their loved one is feeling. Serenity advances and improves EHRs and clinical practice by providing quick, easy communication channels with the patient and/or appropriate Power of Attorney (POA) that includes the entire care team.

With Serenity, clinical teams no longer have to operate in silos. Serenity’s HIPAA-compliant platform means access to information across clinical teams — encouraging collaboration and providing on-demand decision support.

Any caregiver knows that so much happens in the details of the day — they may observe a small tick or disruption that is quickly lost in the hustle and bustle of taking care of several patients. Instead of a potential high-risk patient symptom being accidentally disregarded, Serenity allows these caregivers to denote these symptoms in real-time, ensuring observations get captured. Now, the team can more quickly and easily identify clinical changes to high-risk patients thanks to Serenity’s innovative technology.

For senior care, outcomes are tied to optimal wellbeing and quality of life throughout the journey. We drive wellbeing by creating simple, secure, patient-centered communication across the various care teams from organizations providing care throughout the journey. The consistent, streamlined communication creates an audit trail, giving any new provider an immediate view into the history and current status of the patient.

Securing Patient Health Information is a Key Pillar for Serenity Connect

Serenity is proud to support HIPAA-compliant messaging across the entire care team, including all service providers and Power of Attorney, as appropriate. This secure messaging platform means that care teams and caregivers no longer need to give out personal contact information (cell phone numbers) to text or share updates.

Serenity is a firm believer in actively participating in information sharing, especially as we continuously provide educational information about the senior care journey to family members at exactly the right time. The first fourteen days after a new resident moves into a senior care facility are the most important for caregivers to establish a trusted foundation with family members. Serenity is there every step of the way to provide resources and support for both the caregivers and family members.

While helping caregivers to provide high-quality care is our primary goal, we know that technology is the answer to truly supporting an integrated care team. Serenity supports the entire care community to streamline and reduce the time it takes to get up to speed with a new patient. This includes:

• Hospice Providers: Serenity reduces the amount of time spent in Interdisciplinary Team (IDT) meetings because the entire team is part of the ongoing communication and collaboration of patient care.
• Senior Living: Serenity reduces the time spent in care conferences because all team members and POA have had an ongoing conversation about the patient’s care so there are no surprises. Now, everyone is prepared.
• Home Care & Home Health Providers: Serenity allows team members to easily step into a patient communication channel and know what’s happening so they hit the ground running.
• Pharmacies: The HIPAA-compliant, patient-centered communication with the Director of Nursing for senior care providers ensure that the appropriate team members know exactly what’s going on at any given time.

Serenity Connect Supports Sustainable Infrastructure

Serenity Connect streamlines processes within senior living and care providers’ organizations, including home health, home care, hospice, assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing facilities, saving 3-10 hours per week per key staff member. For one hospice care team in Colorado, Serenity has saved them the equivalent of $53,000 per year in time savings due to the streamlined communication Serenity offers.

Serenity can also help to increase revenue for care facilities. More often than not, the son or daughter of the family members is the economic buyer looking for a high-quality facility for Mom or Dad. The communication platform can be the differentiating factor as it provides easy access to technology for these key family members. With Serenity, the daughter or son taking care of their parent is no longer in the dark about what’s going on with Mom or Dad, and are more apt to choose the facility that is using Serenity technology to streamline communication. Families know that means they will get regular, transparent communication — a deciding factor for these economic buyers. For one assisted living facility, using Serenity has led to three new patients in the last two months alone — a significant increase after a reduced census due to COVID-19.

Value-based care is at the core of Serenity Connect to ensure that family members can be active participants in the care of their loved ones. Serenity’s simple communication tool means a family member can ask questions and actually get answers without the hassle of phone tag, email threads, and having things lost in translation.

When one family member was asked to sum up her experience with Serenity, she said, “It’s a healer for families that aren’t always on the same page — it’s good for loved ones and it’s good for families.”