WardTrace Care Handoffs · First application: Maternity care

When care cannot wait, the data cannot either.

Care Handoffs keeps urgent care moving across organizations. In maternity care, WardTrace makes every handoff, missing item, owner, and deadline visible while clinical records, coverage information, and decisions sit in different systems.

View the proposed workflow See how the data moves

A postpartum patient, clinician, and coordinator reviewing one care plan

What New York documented

The timing and access problems are real.

The New York State Expert Panel on Postpartum Care documented maternal mortality timing, insurance continuity problems, and the need for stronger care coordination.

66.7%

Within one week

In the reviewed cohort, two thirds of pregnancy-related deaths occurred within one week after pregnancy ended.

45.5%

The following day

The largest single share occurred the day after pregnancy ended. That is mortality timing, not payer-decision timing.

3 barriers

Coverage continuity

The report names uncertainty about coverage, eligibility recertification, and confusion about available options.

These historical figures come from earlier New York cohorts cited in the January 2021 report. The report does not state that prior authorization caused these deaths.Read the official report.

The systems diagnosis

The information exists, but it does not move as one decision file.

Clinical information

The required history, results, medications, and care plan may sit across providers and healthcare exchange networks.

Coverage information

Eligibility status, recertification, and payer requirements may live in separate administrative systems.

The decision request

A payer cannot answer a complete question when the request arrives without the information required to decide it.

Important boundary

Paper-shaped data exchange is the proposed systems diagnosis. It is not a conclusion made by the New York expert panel.

What the proposal delivers

Keep the request, the record, and the answer in one place.

The request stays visible

Every request, missing item, and deadline sits where a coordinator can see it.

The right record travels with it

The clinical summary a payer needs goes along with the request.

The answer has an owner

The payer's answer, the person responsible, the deadline, and any escalation stay in one history.

Built on the standards you already use, confirmed in a pilot.

WardTrace is designed to work with the clinical-record and payer transaction standards hospitals and payers already use. The exact connection is confirmed with each participating hospital and payer in a pilot. It does not replace the payer transactions required for eligibility, prior authorization, or remittance.

HL7 CCD/CDA CMS transaction standards

The WardTrace layer

Every accepted request creates an accountable history.

EXAMPLE: APPROVED

Care can move.

The answer stays with the request and the record.

REFUSED

The exact problem is named.

A provider can review or correct the failed requirement.

DEFERRED

The delay gets an owner.

The reason, next action, deadline, and escalation stay visible.

The proposed workflow avoids an empty fourth outcome called pending. It is intended to help reduce one correctable source of dangerous delay, but that outcome has not been established in a field pilot.

What is answered

The source and proposed direction are clear. A pilot must supply the evidence.

Answered

The source problem is postpartum mortality, coverage continuity, and care coordination.
The clinical-data starting point is an HL7 CCD/CDA record.
The proposal is designed to work with the standards hospitals and payers already use.

Confirm in the pilot

The real postpartum workflow, provider, healthcare network, and payer.
The transaction standards each participating payer supports.
The decision owner, governing deadline, escalation rule, and success measure.

Review the proposed workflow

Beyond maternity care

Every high-stakes handoff needs a visible owner.

Maternity care is the first application, not the boundary. The same accountability layer can support referrals, prior authorization, discharge, specialist transitions, and post-acute care.

Sources behind the care-handoff presentation

The numbers show the scale of harm around broken handoffs.

These studies cover different populations and different kinds of harm. They should not be added together, and they do not say every event was caused by a broken handoff. They show why clear ownership, acceptance, follow-up, and escalation matter.