by Kristin Rowan, Editor

Regulatory requirements for home health quality assurance are designed to monitor and improve quality of care. QA focuses on ensuring that patients get safe, effective, compassionate care that meets their individual needs. QA also improves patient outcomes and reduces adverse events like ER visits and rehospitalizations. OASIS includes 79 standardized medical, nursing, and rehab data elements for a comprehensive assessment. Typical OASIS assessments take 1-2 hours to complete, depending on the patient’s complexity and the assessment type. 

The Rowan Report recently came across a tool that addresses the complexities of OASIS coding. We sat down with Zach Newman (CEO) and Dan Conger (Founder) at Enzo Health to learn more about their AI powered QA tool with customizable workflows.

Enzo Health is a documentation tool that automates workflows, acting as a co-pilot for your agency. Some of the workflows that Enzo Health supports include intake, OASIS, and QA reviews. Automating these processes can reduce errors and clawbacks, save your clinicians hours of paperwork, and offer cost savings to your agency.

With the Enzo health QA tool, users upload all documents related to an episode. This will include the referral, initial visit notes, patient information, medical history, and form 485. Enzo calls out any issues it finds in the documentation.

In Face-to-Face encounters, Enzo looks for dates, signatures from qualifying clinicians, a valid primary diagnosis, and other qualifying information.

For ICD-10 Coding, Enzo assesses primary and secondary diagnoses, and adds notes with links to where the information can be found in the uploaded documentation.

Enzo then provides functional limitations and improvements that can be made. Using a team of clinicians that are trained as home health coders, Enzo provides a proxy for internal teams. These coders review charts and finalize diagnosis coding and OASIS answers.

The Rowan Report has often stated, and will continue to stand by this fact, that there is no substitute for face-to-face care and the expertise of the nurses and clinicians in the home. We have also seen the advancement of artificial intelligence that provides assistance and guidance at the point-of-care that can be useful. Enzo health includes a chat tool that pulls evidence-based information to provide guidance, coding instructions, and other help to nurses.

Enzo Health has developed a talk-to-text scribe tool that integrates directly with the QA tool. The use of both products together would likely save more time as well as reduce errors. The Rowan Report will provide a thorough product review of the scribe tool at a later date. Enzo Health charges a flat fee determined by volume and offers bundle pricing for using both the QA and Scribe tools.

Costs are increasing, the workforce shortage is ongoing, nurses are suffering from burnout, and employees are stretched about as thin as they can go. Any tool that alleviates paperwork, stress, unpaid work at home to finish documentation, and the need for additional back-office staff is worth looking into. Enzo differentiates its tool from other QA software with their team of clinicians trained in home health coding to review the documentation. This end-to-end tool boasts a 95% accuracy rate and do date has no clawbacks or ADRs. 

In my conversation with Zach and Dan, their coding expertise and knowledge of the home health industry were evident. They are excited about the tools they are creating and passionate about helping agencies to provide patient care, a task they referred to as “very noble.” They continue to improve upon their software and conceive of innovative additions. If they continue as they started, Enzo Health will be one to watch.