Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is offering patients a new tech-driven platform for end-of-life care management and is rolling out a direct hospital-to-patient messaging system.
Through a partnership with Grace, a startup that comes out of the first class of companies from the Techstars Healthcare Accelerator program, Cedars-Sinai will work directly with families and caregivers of terminal and recently deceased patients to help them through the entire end-of-life process. This include managing funeral costs, understanding hospice care and the myriad other challenges families face after the death of a loved one.
The end-of-life care management platform connects Cedars-Sinai patients and their families with Grace staff members, who guide them through the process.
Additionally, WELL, which outfits hospitals and health systems with a messaging platform to route patients directly to the appropriate staff member to help them handle their needs, will now provide Cedars-Sinai with the ability to securely interact with patients.
Once installed on computers in departments throughout the medical center, WELL's system pulls information related to patient requests from EHRs to speed up hospital response time. The system also uses bots to respond to patients quickly with requested information like appointment time, location, and paperwork, among other things.