Essay Sample on Matrix Care Application

Introduction

Matrix Care has revolutionized nursing practice due to its important features. Presently, the application is available on personal computers and can be installed using various browsers. It is important to note that the application is still unavailable in Apple's MacBook computers. Matrix Care is an electronic health recording that is cloud-based and offers solutions to home care facilities, senior citizens, and nursing homes. It is therefore essential to understand its key features, uses, relevance, policies and procedure, and challenges in nursing practice.

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Key Features

The software has distinctive features that make it unique in its functions as an electronic health record. Its features predominantly include management and tracking (Arthur et al., 2013). Matrix Care also has admission management features that help to keep track of the number of people in nursing homes and home care facilities. It also has billing and pricing features for facilitation of payment of care services. Additionally, the application has care planning features that ensure that clients are allotted the best care services to improve their wellness and health. It is also essential to note that matrix care has incident management features for reporting major occurrences in healthcare facilities. It also has a nutrition tracking feature for observing the feeding habits of clients admitted to healthcare facilities.

Uses of the Application

Matrix Care finds a wide range of uses in a nursing setting. It is useful in offering tools that generate reports, track leads and manage referrals. Moreover, it has resident and clinical management capabilities which allow users or clients to record residential injuries and incidents as well as create task sheets for caregivers. Also, the application enables nursing practitioners to automate service plans to give clients a good experience (Arthur et al., 2013).

The Relevance of Matrix Care in Nursing Practice

The application is vital in helping skilled nursing facilities to be successful in offering better resident care to clients by offering revenue and clinical cycle management solutions. By so doing, it helps to achieve improved clinical outcomes and reduced readmission rates. It is worthy to highlight that Matrix Care improves communication among caregivers. As a result, it increases coordination among different care settings to facilitate person-centered care, which improves the quality of care and resident satisfaction.

Matrix Care is also vital in improving workflow in nursing settings. Imperatively, this application integrates data to offer strong coordination of interdisciplinary care within nursing facilities. The application offers a skilled nursing solution which allows financial and clinical users to share data entry for resident and census information, which helps in generating concise and consistent records. The ramification for this is the creation of an intuitive workflow which enables swift system navigation for efficient provision of resident care.

Matrix Care is also important in nursing practice since it facilitates tracking of resident information of clients upon admission as well as the discharge. Castro, Oliveira, and Campos (2016) explain that it achieves this purpose through the use of an embedded Clinical Decision Support aimed at reducing readmission rates and improving patient care. Moreover, this application helps in saving time as it enables quick access to crucial resident information, which enables a nursing practitioner to identify key resident records swiftly.

Policies and Procedures for the Application

Just like any other software, Matrix Care also has a set of policies and procedures that its users must adhere to when they use the application. In particular, procedures cover the installation of the application on a client's local computer. The procedure is used for both privately-owned and work computers. It is paramount to elucidate that Matrix Care application cannot install on MacBook computers. However, it can install in a variety of personal computer's search engines like internet explorer among others. Other than the procedure for the installation of the application, there are stringent policies regarding Matrix Care's password. It is vital to note that password is essential information that helps to protect the application against external invasion from hackers and other unscrupulous people.

The Matrix Care password policy requires that usernames as well as passwords be separate and be managed independently of the network's login account. Additionally, clients are mandated to conceal their user account information from any person. This implies that they are not permitted to share their account information with a third party. Importantly, "Matrix Care has Health Insurance Portability, and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protected client information" (Wilkes, 2014). All staffs using the application are issued with password and username, and any changes that they make in Matrix Care are tracked for accountability purposes. Thus, each user of the application is held responsible for the protection of client information under HIPAA. It is the policy of the Matrix Care that its password must be seven characters and above with a combination letter cases, numbers, and special characters. It is also a requirement that a password is changed regularly, preferably after every 120 days. The account is also locked after a user makes five unsuccessful attempts to log into it.

Improvements in Nursing Practice due to the Application

The application is beneficial to the nursing practice since it guarantees various improvements in the field. Matrix Care has clinical decision support which helps nursing staffs to improve relevant evidence-based care. Also, the application helps nurses to manage acute changes which consequently help to facilitate quality provision. Other than that, Matrix Care helps nurses to hook clients with pharmacy vendors, a situation that offers convenience and efficiency to clients. The application also helps to reduce readmission rates by supporting high-quality care to clients. It is important also to note that the application has a dashboard that provides a month-end summary which enables monitoring and management of facilities' processes. This ability enables effective process evaluation and control which subsequently improves quality in nursing practice. The software also allows for the integration of continuity of care which enables nursing facilities to share client information with other healthcare partners to facilitate the good nursing experience for a client.

Challenges the Application Presents to Nursing Practice

It is pivotal to understand that the technological world is dynamic and as such, password hacking tricks are being developed every day. Consequently, this puts client information in great danger of being leaked and thereby going against the confidentiality principle. Another challenge associated with Matrix Care is that it limits nurse-patient interaction. Notably, it encourages patients to use the site for admission, medication, and other forms of nursing care. Strauss (2013) elucidates that the ramification for this is that it prevents the establishment of a personal relationship between nursing practitioners and their patients or clients. Lack of good working relationship makes clients withhold critical pieces of information that could be helpful in providing them with the best nursing care experience.

The application also makes it difficult to track behavioral and physical health of clients. It is prudent to assert that sometimes a nursing practitioner needs to physically examine a client to determine his or her health and behavioral characteristics. This is because clients may sometimes fail to describe their physical health and observable symptoms accurately. Consequently, clients may end up giving wrong details leading to misdiagnosis and wrong medication or care. Matrix Care does not allow interoperability in nursing practice. It is essential to note that the sharing of patient information is a priority in nursing practice since it enables practitioners to have an instant response to clients' needs and emergencies. However, Matrix Care encourages limited interoperability due to the stringent security measures put in place to guarantee the protection of patient information. Also, Matrix Care requires skills and knowledge to use effectively. It will, therefore, mean adjusting the training curricula of nursing to accommodate Matrix Care usage.

Conclusion

Matrix Care is an important application that will revolutionize nursing practice if improved and adopted. This software has features that enable it to track and manage various client activities. Through this application, a nursing practitioner can admit a client remotely, manage incidents that may occur in a nursing care facility, and monitor a client's medication and meals among others. For this reason, the application is relevant in nursing practice. Notably, it reduces readmission rates, enhances the care provided to clients, and it improves workflow in nursing facilities. The application is based on stringent policies and procedure, particularly during installation and password management to protect it from external attacks from hackers and other unscrupulous individuals. However, Matrix Care still has challenges that threaten nursing practice. These challenges need an urgent solution to enable enjoyment of many benefits associated with the application.

References

Arthur, J., Kwon, J. H., Reddy, S., Quinn, D. C., Bruera, E., & Hui, D. (2013). Assessing patient care in palliative care using the healthcare matrix. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 16(8), 987-992.

Castro, C. P. D., Oliveira, M. M. D., & Campos, G. W. D. S. (2016). Matrix Support in the SUS of Campinas: how an inter-professional practice has developed and consolidated in the health network Introduction. Ciencia & Saude Coletiva, 21(5), 1625-1636.

Strauss, B. (2013). The patient perception of the nurse-patient relationship when nurses utilize an electronic health record within a hospital setting. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 31(12), 596-604.

Wilkes, J. J. (2014). The creation of HIPAA culture: Prioritizing privacy paranoia over patient care. BYU L. Rev., 1213.