Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center Partners with CipherHealth to Introduce New Patient Discharge Solution

"Echo" Provides Recorded Discharge Instructions for Blind and Visually Impaired Patients

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Jun 02, 2015, 11:39 ET

NEW YORK, June 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Nationally recognized full-service teaching hospital Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center announced today it is among the first hospitals in the state to comply with the New York State Public Health law Act mandating that hospitals provide recorded discharge instructions to blind and visually impaired patients who request it with a permanent, sustainable solution. The introduction of the new law enabled Kingsbrook to enhance its discharge procedures for all patients with the launch of Echo, created by CipherHealth, a leading provider of innovations and technologies designed to help healthcare providers improve the quality of patient care.

Echo was created to improve patient comprehension of and compliance to hospital discharge instructions. Echo allows healthcare providers to record secure instructions that patients can access from home. The platform gives patients and healthcare providers peace of mind after they leave the hospital and empowers them to take ownership of their care, post-discharge. The design of Echo made it versatile enough to allow Kingsbrook to be in rapid compliance with the new law while serving its entire patient population with a better level of care in the discharge process.

"The decision to implement CipherHealth's Echo solution came as a way to provide top-notch care that meets specific patient needs," said Dr. Jane Lederer, Vice President Nursing/Chief Nursing Officer for Kingsbrook. "For blind and visually impaired patients, this means empowering them with care plans they can comprehend in a most effective way."

The New York State Public Health law, effective since October 2014, applies to all patients admitted and discharged from the hospital, including emergency departments. Hospitals must provide the recording upon discharge and must ensure that the patient requesting the information as a recording has access to it at his or her convenience.

"While Echo was created long before this new and important piece of legislation, we are quite pleased that we've been able to deliver it as a turn-key enhancement to Kingsbrook's patient discharge procedures," said Zach Silverzweig, Co-Founder of CipherHealth. "In terms of this new law, Echo truly represents a compliance solution that is fast to implement and allows centers to both quickly comply and also enhance the standard of care for all patients."

About Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center
Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, celebrating its 89th year, is a 784-bed teaching Medical Center. Centers of Excellence Include: Kingsbrook Rehabilitation Institute offering Physical & Rehabilitative Medicine, including Brooklyn's only New York State approved Traumatic Brain Injury & Coma Recovery Unit, an inpatient Geriatric Psychiatry Program, Pharmacy, Radiology, the Wound Healing & Hyperbaric Center, Orthopedic Surgery, a Women's Wellness Center featuring Gynecological Surgery and state of the art Digital Mammography. Other specialty areas include: Emergency Services, Ambulatory Surgery and a Certified Non-Invasive Vascular Laboratory, as well as a 466-bed Adult and Pediatric long term care facility. Kingsbrook and Rutland Nursing Home are JCAHO certified and not-for-profit members of the Greater New York Hospital Association and the Healthcare Association of New York State.

About CipherHealth
Since 2009, CipherHealth has been innovating and delivering products to help care providers effectively and efficiently provide quality of care for their patients. By harnessing technology to improve patient outcomes and experiences, CipherHealth and its suite of products focus on the evolution of patient care. CipherHealth is based in New York City and was named "Best Place to Work in Healthcare" by Modern Healthcare (2014).

About Echo
Echo is a secure recording tool that allows healthcare providers to record discharge instructions that patients can access from home as frequently as they would like. Echo was designed to enable hospitals to better help their patients to comprehend and comply with their discharge instructions.

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SOURCE CipherHealth