NextUp: The Health Tech Company Eliminating Hospital Discharge Delays
Repisodic has developed a technology solution to help patients and their families make smarter, faster decisions about post-acute care.
Mike Cwalinski is the founder and chief executive officer of Repisodic. / Courtesy
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Who: Repisodic founder and CEO, Mike Cwalinski, and co-founder Ryan Miller know many people who’ve struggled to navigate the hospital discharge process.
In addition to learning about discharge on short notice, families of hospitalized patients must often answer many questions, with very little knowledge of what the right answers should be. For example, where should the patient go to recover once they’ve been discharged from the hospital? Can they go home, or will they need to select a rehabilitation facility? Even if hospital staff shares a list of the facilities for the patient to consider, families are still left with the burden of calling each office to find the best fit for their needs. All these decisions typically need to be made within a few short hours.
“The discharge process is a bit of chaos. The families don’t have a lot of time to make decisions. It’s a lot of time pressure, and there’s a lot of inexperience among families and patients about what making a good decision should look like,” Cwalinski told NextHealth PHL.
“We felt like that process could use technology to be streamlined and really help all the stakeholders in that process, the hospital, the patient, the family, and the organization that the patient is being discharged to.”
Drawing from their prior experience working for Siemens, one of the world’s largest suppliers of medical imaging, lab diagnostics, medical IT and hearing aids, Cwalinski and Miller established Repisodic in 2017 with the goal of developing new technologies that would make it easier for patients and healthcare providers to plan the best post-acute care.
What: Repisodic’s lead solution for post-acute care, Repisodic Choice, is a software platform that is designed to replace the pamphlets and paper lists of instructions patients typically receive at discharge. Discharge planners use Repisodic Choice to curate care options that align with each individual patient’s geographic preferences, insurance plans, and specialty healthcare service needs. Since the individually curated care plans are created digitally, the information can easily be shared with the patient or family members and caregivers via text or email. Discharge planners can then educate the patient and their family members about their options, allowing them to make more informed choices without having to search around for the information on their own.
“We’re all about helping patients make better, faster decisions at hospital discharge,” Cwalinski said. “We try to provide all the information that a patient or family will need to make their decision right on the platform.”
Repisodic’s patient-facing software is compliant with HIPAA and aligns with the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT Act). Cwalinski says several major healthcare providers are currently using the company’s technology, including the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, one of its early adopters.
When: In January, Repisodic closed a $1.75 million seed round led by American Enterprise Ventures, a division of American Enterprise Group (AEG). The company plans to use the funds to recruit and hire additional experienced sales, marketing, and technology personnel to add to its team of nine full-time employees.
Why: As mandated by the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT Act), hospitals are now required to assist patients in selecting a post-acute care provider by using and sharing data on quality measures and resource use measures. For healthcare providers, Repisodic boasts that its platform is “the only free solution on the market for hospitals to achieve compliance with new CMS regulations.”
For patients, the company’s communication tools represent a solution to the struggles patients often face when they find themselves in the hospital with an array of decisions to make within a short period of time. Repisodic’s technology allows case managers and social workers to present post-acute care options in an easy-to-understand format that modernizes the patient and family engagement process.
What It Means: While there are other digital discharge tools on the market in other parts of the country, Repisodic is leading the way in the northeast. The company’s communication tools may help improve workflow efficiency at discharge as well as patient satisfaction, making them an ideal partner for healthcare providers in the region and beyond.
