Brickyard Healthcare

THE CHALLENGE

For Brickyard Healthcare, tracking, storing, and managing paper-based COVID vaccine verification documents for its 23 skilled nursing centers was an unwieldy task addled with the risks of lost documents and inefficient use of staff resources.

THE OUTCOME

Accushield’s new Document Management add-on feature offers a streamlined, paperless process that captures vaccination status, injection dates, vaccine cards, and even test results.

THE IMPACT

In addition to significant time and cost savings in gathering vaccination data, Brickyard has empowered management with accurate, accessible sign-in and vaccination data to meet reporting requirements and drive operational data analysis.

Complying with the COVID vaccine reporting requirements for long-term care facilities is not an easy lift. For Seth Caldwell, Clinical Informatics Nurse for Brickyard Healthcare, that means compiling, analyzing, and organizing more than 100 lines of data on a weekly basis to send to the to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Keeping Up with Compliance

This task is no small feat, especially when data must be obtained for thousands of individuals affiliated with the company’s 23 skilled nursing centers. Until July of 2021, Caldwell tackled this job using a cumbersome and tedious paper-based system to track vaccination information for staff, volunteers, and residents.

With the launch of Accushield’s Document Management system, however, he was able to shift Brickyard’s method to one that capture vaccination status, injection dates, vaccine cards, and test results for all staff, volunteers, and service providers via a secure, HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based database.

Brickyard implemented the add-on feature as soon as it launched. “With an increase in reporting requirements for COVID and mandates, we thought it was probably one of the best tools we can use and make sure we were in compliance,” says Caldwell.

The company had previously implemented Accushield’s tablet-based kiosks, replacing the manual paper logbooks with an efficient sign-in and health screening process for all visitors, staff, third-party caregivers, patients, and residents who enter and exit the building. “The document manager now enables us to know if someone has a COVID card and it gathers data on which type of vaccine they have,” Caldwell notes. “It also helps us add booster information as well.”

Real-Time Tracking

What’s more, the feature gives Caldwell quick and easy access to real-time tracking dashboards for all of the company’s centers. For the resident data, which is stored in individual EHRs, Caldwell says he combines it with the Accushield data to easily meet all necessary reporting requirements. In addition to collecting and recording user injection dates from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, the Document Management system enables clients like Brickyard to use its dashboards to monitor sign-in data and to approve or deny COVID-19 vaccine and testing information.

Prior to implementing the feature, some of Brickyard’s facilities utilized paper-based screening forms. “And when you have that much paper, it becomes very easy to lose and it’s also hard to track down and go back and look at,” notes Caldwell. Paper forms were cumbersome to keep up with. “Accushield now enables us to easily update and standardize the screening and uploading process. Honestly, it has everything we need.”

One of Caldwell’s favorite features is the ability to get alerts “to the right people, right away.” This helps them to catch individuals who have failed screenings, or entered information incorrectly, and ensure the safety of other staff and residents in the building. “I like how it alerts staff right away if someone who responded to a screening question has a symptom or needs to redo screening evaluation,” he says. “That benefit has been huge for us.”

Adaptability a Plus

The paper system also proved unwieldy when something needed to be updated across all platforms. “It’s definitely been a huge help in saving time with all the updates that occur on a regular basis, as well as its standardized approach to screening. The document manager has opened up more possibilities, and we do much more with the data at hand,” Caldwell says.

“For example, if we had wanted to track when someone is due for their booster, we didn’t have ability to do so. Now, we have so much more customization that if there is a change in regulation we can adapt with the times and not have to wait for Accushield to update all their software. We have the ability to customize it without them having to go into the back end and do it.”

He notes that almost every company wants the base software and then the ability to customize it to their particular needs. “That’s what the document manager allows us to do,” he says.

Looking ahead, Caldwell believes that COVID reporting requirements, as well as perhaps others, will be the “new normal” for senior living providers. “Even if we eliminate COVID, we will see this with the flu and the feds will likely continue to use mandatory reporting and gathering of data,” he speculates. “I don’t think it will slow down. I really don’t.”