BATON ROUGE, La.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Amedisys, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMED), one of the nation’s leading health care at home companies, announced today that executive vice president of operations, Patrick Thompson, presented at the 2013 IBM Information on Demand Conference on “Enabling Smarter Care Transitions for Improved Care and Reduced Costs.”

With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which includes a heightened focus on reducing avoidable readmissions, more hospitals, health systems and accountable care organizations are looking for ways to help their patients return safely home and avoid unnecessary and costly trips to the emergency room or get readmitted to the hospital. Many of them understand a safe transition home from the hospital is a key element to achieving their readmissions reduction goal.

Amedisys has leveraged its nationwide network of care transitions clinicians to help people safely transition back home after a hospital stay. The network of care transitions coordinators is connected to the Amedisys care team, the hospitals and the patients’ primary care physicians through a proprietary information technology platform.

“I believe we have the best caregivers at Amedisys,” stated Patrick Thompson, executive vice president of operations for Amedisys. “Supported by our collaborative technology platform, our caregiving team becomes the most efficient and effective post-acute care network in the nation. And we are proud to be working with IBM to design and build our next generation of information management capabilities,” he concluded.

Amedisys care teams are supported by Amedisys point-of-care tablets, wireless connectivity and a physician portal. The company is developing a patient and caregiver portal as well to provide patients and their loved ones with access to their plan of care and health records.

For more about Amedisys Care Transitions, please visit: http://www.amedisys.com/physicians-and-health-care-professionals/care-transitions.

About Amedisys:

Amedisys, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMED) is a leading health care at home company delivering personalized home health and hospice care to more than 360,000 patients each year. Amedisys is focused on delivering the care that is best for our patients, whether that is home-based recovery and rehabilitation after an operation or injury, care focused on empowering them to manage a chronic disease, palliative care for those with a terminal illness, or hospice care at the end of life. The Company’s state-of-the-art advanced chronic care management programs and leading-edge technology enables it to deliver quality care based upon the latest evidence-based best practices. Amedisys is a recognized innovator, being one of the first in the industry to equip its clinicians with point-of-care laptop technology and referring physicians with an internet portal that enables real-time coordination of patient care seamlessly. Amedisys also has the industry’s first-ever nationwide Care Transitions program, designed to reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions through patient and caregiver health coaching and care coordination, which starts in the hospital and continues throughout completion of the patient’s home health plan of care. For more information about the Company, please visit: http://www.amedisys.com.

Amedisys, Inc.
Kendra Kimmons, 225-299-3720
Marketing & Communications
[email protected]

Source: Amedisys, Inc.