Emerging Post–Acute Care Product Suites 2021
An Initial Look at the MatrixCare Suite

What Is a Post–Acute Care Product Suite?

A PAC product suite is a collection of solutions designed for use in different care settings. Most organizations don't offer the full gamut of PAC services (they offer home-based or facility-based care), and comprehensive technology is still emerging. Vendor portfolio expansion is primarily acquisition driven.

MatrixCare Post–Acute Care Product Suite 

MatrixCare represents the consolidation of a number of ResMed-acquired companies and offers a broad portfolio of solutions to meet almost all major post–acute care needs. The vendors and solutions under the MatrixCare name include (but are not limited to) Brightree, Answers on Demand (AOD), SigmaCare, and Soneto (see The MatrixCare Portfolio chart for a complete view of which solutions support which care settings).

MatrixCare is a client-focused vendor who has differentiated themselves in the post–acute care market through—as reported by interviewed customers—excellent ongoing communication and support. Current tools meet most customer needs and are helpful in driving efficiency and improving patient care across the continuum. The portfolio is continually being developed, and customers look forward to future advancement in new areas like AI, advanced analytics, patient monitoring, and transitions of care. As MatrixCare continues to grow, customers have begun seeing occasional support misses (i.e., slower response times), gaps in expertise, and less ability to customize tools.

Clinical Efficiency and Improved Care Continuity Are Key Outcomes of Product Suite Approach

Customers with services that span multiple care settings almost universally agree that valuable outcomes have been achieved by adopting as much of the MatrixCare product suite as possible. This is especially true for those using MatrixCare across multiple high-level care settings, like home health and long-term care. Clinical efficiency is one noteworthy outcome; organizations who have recently adopted the solution say simply going electronic is a gain, but additional efficiency benefits are realized by organizations using a combination of tools across multiple care settings. Other key efficiency benefits for cross-continuum care are the ability to get signatures, track orders, and use dashboards and reports to identify next steps for patients. Provider organizations report the biggest potential for impact is in the system’s ability to provide a seamless view of the patient across the organization’s different care settings and services.

For many interviewed MatrixCare customers, the product suite approach has led to both faster and more personalized patient care. This benefit goes beyond saving clinicians time—patient care is also improved because of the ability to highlight potential patient issues and reduce errors. Strong reporting from MatrixCare also makes it easier for customers to stay compliant and report to CMS and other entities. Additional outcomes mentioned include the ability to standardize care thanks to a view of performance across multiple facilities, the ability to access records on any device, and—for some care settings—time saved on back-end reporting (e.g., billing, insurance). Customers note there are still interoperability and development barriers to getting maximum value from a platform approach; some MatrixCare solutions are still disparate and require work to integrate.

MatrixCare Meets Customers’ Current Needs; Navigating Growing Pains and Competing Development Priorities Is Key to the Future

Customer-Centric Nature Driving Today’s Wins—Successfully Integrating Acquisitions Required for Tomorrow’s

Many of the benefits customers get from MatrixCare’s broader post–acute care product suite are supported by the company culture, which respondents say is focused on great support, aligns well with customers’ future needs, and prioritizes clinician satisfaction with the tools. Future success and benefits hinge on integrating the acquired solutions. Only a few customers identified product integration as a key challenge for MatrixCare right now, but many agree lack of integration across care settings—regardless of the vendor—is an important question for organizations going forward. This involves integration with acute care and across post–acute care settings. Customers also expect MatrixCare to address the lack of cross-product functionality knowledge, insufficient training (which can limit adoption), and massive growth from acquisitions limiting MatrixCare’s ability to deliver a tailored customer experience.

Support

“MatrixCare’s strength is customer service. I have had the opportunity to use multiple EHRs, and MatrixCare’s customer service is head and shoulders above other vendors’. MatrixCare is fairly nimble at meeting new challenges and listening to our requests.” —EMR director (using MatrixCare for LPC/CCRC, including the following care settings, in addition to other services: home health, hospice/palliative care, inpatient rehabilitation facility, private duty, senior living, and skilled nursing facility)

Development

“MatrixCare helps us to communicate to them about where we need improvement. They are very good at product development, and they are easily accessible. We know that our voice is heard when we talk to them about things that need to be improved or developed further. The vendor is responsive regardless of the size of their customer’s organization.” —CEO (using MatrixCare for LPC/CCRC, including the following care settings: home health, hospice/palliative care, senior living, and skilled nursing facility)

Ease of use

“The key strengths of MatrixCare’s solution are its compliance and ease of use. The general flow and functionality of the work processes are great. Visually, the system is more user friendly than other programs I have used.” —IT manager (using MatrixCare for hospice/palliative care)

Functionality

“The vendor has several experts we work with who are very good and knowledgeable, but we wish MatrixCare had more of those experts. They could get more of the folks who know the system inside and out and who would be in a position to help develop and implement the new requirements.” —Clinical manager (using MatrixCare for hospice/palliative care)

Training

“We are a privately owned company. Maybe other types of organizations have more money to throw at things. I have been through this kind of thing before in other facilities. The setup and training didn’t meet our expectations. We didn’t pay for what we needed; we just got the bare minimum. The system is working, but we are having to learn a lot of modules ourselves. The vendor could do better at educating us about training options.” —Nursing director (using MatrixCare for inpatient rehabilitation facility and skilled nursing facility)

Cookie-cutter approach to platform deployment

“The challenge is that the solution is set up for global use as opposed to being set up for individualized use in a way that best serves us. The solution is a cookie-cutter system. It is a normal electronic record, and we just have to deal with it.” —Director of nursing care (using MatrixCare for home health, hospice/palliative care, LPC/CCRC, senior living, and skilled nursing facility)

The MatrixCare Portfolio

Below are the various MatrixCare solutions and the post–acute care settings they support.

About This Report

Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT products and services their organizations use. On an ongoing basis, evaluations are collected using KLAS’ standard quantitative evaluation, which is comprised of numeric ratings questions and yes/no questions. For this report, a supplemental evaluation was used to delve deeper into the most pressing questions facing the emerging market of post–acute care product suites.

Over the last 12 months, KLAS collected supplemental evaluations from 24 of MatrixCare's healthcare organization customers whose services cover multiple post–acute care settings and service lines.

Sample Sizes

Sample sizes displayed throughout this report (e.g., n=16) represent the total number of unique customer organizations interviewed for a given vendor or solution. However, it should be noted that to allow for the representation of differing perspectives within any one customer organization, samples may include surveys from different individuals at the same organization. Ratings from these individuals are aggregated in order to prevent any one organization’s feedback from disproportionately impacting a solution’s score.