Emerging Post–Acute Care Product Suites 2021
An Initial Look at the WellSky 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.

WellSky Post–Acute Care Product Suite

WellSky has the broadest portfolio of PAC vendors in this series, covering all measured care settings (though with very limited adoption in some). Their portfolio includes native Mediware solutions and acquired solutions from ClearCare, Consolo Services Group, HCS Interactant, and Kinnser. WellSky also acquired CarePort Health’s broadly adopted care coordination platform for hospital discharges to PAC. WellSky has a strong history in home health (through Kinnser), hospice (Kinnser and Consolo), private duty (ClearCare), inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient rehabilitation, and other areas with fewer clients (behavioral health, LTC, senior living, LPCs/CCRCs). WellSky is seen as an established vendor with a strong understanding of PAC challenges. Respondents say clinical and financial tools meet their needs; they would like more hospice development following the Kinnser and Consolo acquisitions. Acquisitions and growth have slowed communication and support, and clients want improved relationships.

WellSky’s Financial Strengths Drive Outcomes & Boost Efficiency

Half of interviewed customers say leveraging WellSky’s portfolio has contributed to their organization’s financial health. The solutions reduce manual processes and tasks, which drives operational and financial improvements across multiple care settings. Users also like the solutions’ built-in logic and say it saves them time. Strong administrative tools have helped several organizations reduce admission times, streamline authorizations, and manage care across the organization. Also, a few organizations report decreased A/R days and other financial outcomes. Many respondents have also seen clinical efficiency gains. Several of these organizations moved to WellSky from paper and say this shift to electronic documentation is at the heart of their clinical efficiency improvement. Improved compliance is another outcome of note, including more compliant documentation by clinicians, the ability to keep up with changing CMS requirements, strong tracking for things like physician signatures, and the ability to meet requirements from clients’ larger affiliates (e.g., managed care organizations). Performance reporting—another notable outcome—gives organizations insights that support marketing campaigns and internal efforts to improve care. A few customers say the WellSky portfolio has improved patient care or the ability to coordinate care across the continuum.

WellSky a Strong Partner for Most Care Settings; Customers Want More Road Map Clarity

Longevity & Experience Are Differentiators; Communication & Support Are Suffering

The customers interviewed for this study describe WellSky’s core products as reliable, tried-and-true solutions. Respondents also say the vendor is knowledgeable about both the industry’s history and its future. In the wake of acquisitions and growth, some customers have experienced issues with phone and web support, including long wait times and slower problem resolution. Increased, improved communication is another customer-reported need.

Strong understanding of the industry

“WellSky’s biggest strength is their knowledge of our state, laws, specialty, and rules. When I looked at other EHRs, the vendors often didn’t know what was required in our state. There wasn’t even a way to support the process. Another strength of WellSky is that they have really good reporting and financial ends.” —Compliance director (using WellSky for behavioral health, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, and outpatient rehabilitation)

Ease of use

“WellSky’s system is straightforward. I have done demos of a lot of other products, and it seems like WellSky’s system is clean and simple to use. . . . I am a big believer when it comes to an EHR that the way that it feels to the end user is of the utmost importance because that impacts our employees’ experiences and work/life balances, and those things reduce turnover. We are in the business of caring, so we want happy people out there doing our work. WellSky’s system seems to meet the needs of my clinicians in that sense.” —VP of care (using WellSky for home health and hospice)

Skilled staff

“WellSky’s first strength is their people. They have very dedicated, loyal people. They don’t just hire technical people; they are hiring people who have worked in the industry. There are physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists all involved in WellSky’s system. Analysts are not just giving feedback; they are also programming the system and figuring out how it can be best used.” —CIO (using WellSky for inpatient rehabilitation facility and outpatient rehabilitation)

Support of responsiveness

“When the support people tell us that they will get back to us within 24 hours or by the end of the week but then can’t fill the basic need for support services, then it is very difficult to believe anything else that they say. The vendor should promise and overdeliver. If they really can’t get back to us within 24 hours, then they should set realistic timelines. There is too much history in their inability to fix their support services, so I don’t see that changing in the next year. The vendor is reactive unless they are trying to sell us something.” —Senior business analyst (using WellSky for home health and home infusion)

Insufficient communication

“Kinnser Software would keep us well informed and let us know way ahead of time when changes were going to be made and what those changes were. Now, WellSky gives us a brief warning that they are going to be shutting down for maintenance, and once the system comes back up, the changes that they have made may or may not work.” —CEO (using WellSky for home health, home infusion, and private duty)

Unclear development

“Anytime that [WellSky launches] something new, they give us a road map of what they are looking for, but they don’t stick to that road map. Whenever we have implemented something additional to the core processes, it has taken longer than originally prescribed because they don’t have the right people with the right knowledge to get the answers to us when needed.” —VP of home health (using WellSky for home health and hospice)

The WellSky Portfolio

Below are the various Netsmart 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 20 of WellSky’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.