Cognosante, LLC today announced the Community Care Referral and Authorization (CCR&A) System, which enables the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to expand community-based care to its Veteran beneficiaries, has processed its ten millionth referral.
In 2019, Cognosante and its partners implemented a web-based referral and authorization management portal, including Intersystems’ HealthShare Referral Manager, to standardize VA’s legacy community care referral processes. Over the past two years, the team introduced numerous enhancements, including streamlined workflows, systems integrations, and enhanced processes for referrals outside the CCR&A system’s original scope. These enhancements helped VA move from manual, disjointed referral processes to a secure, streamlined solution, improving the timeliness of referrals, reducing administrative burden, and facilitating communication between facility community care staff and community providers.
The system now processes about 500,000 referrals per month. All 155 VA Medical Centers use the tool, reducing Veterans’ time to receive care in the community from over a month to under a week. In the last two years, the program facilitated access to ten million episodes of care for over three million Veterans.
“It is so gratifying to see this program grow and evolve” says Philip Dietz, General Manager of Cognosante’s Military and Veteran Health Business Unit. “Each time CCR&A generates a referral, a Veteran receives healthcare. Every day, we strive to make the process even better, streamlining and adding enhancements as the program matures. We know our work is making an impact, and we are incredibly proud of that.”
In addition to implementing and maintaining CCR&A, Cognosante integrated a Clinical Viewer Tool which provides community providers access to the referred Veteran’s entire medical record for the duration of the referral. This empowers community providers with information they need to best care for Veterans. Cognosante also integrated an Emergency Authorization tool that streamlines and standardizes the process for authorizing emergency care, a need that increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
About Cognosante Cognosante provides technology solutions and business process outsourcing to Federal, state, and local government health agencies as well as social services and defense agencies. The company has more than a decade of experience working with States and the Federal government to improve access to care and address the social determinants of health by developing, managing, and executing large multi-faceted technology solutions. Its expertise includes Medicaid, Medicare, military and Veterans’ health, the health insurance marketplace, data standards and analytics, cybersecurity, biometrics, and modular system development and integration.
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