(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI) is helping healthcare providers reduce costly and unnecessary hospital readmissions and avoid fines mandated by the Affordable Care Act. The federal law established a readmissions reduction program that is designed to improve care transitions and reduce readmissions by assessing penalties for hospitals that readmit patients who have been discharged within the previous 30 days.

A February 2013 study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported that 20 percent of Medicare patients are readmitted to hospitals within 30 days of discharge. This is driven in part by the fact that 80 percent of hospitals and primary care physicians lack direct post-discharge contact with patients to identify risks and offer a chance for intervention.

By using a collaborative communications system as part of patient discharge plans, providers have a way of controlling and ultimately, reducing the number of hospital readmissions.

The Pitney Bowes Healthpoint 360 Collaborate solution is designed to trigger communications before - and after - the patient discharge process, and it is scalable to hundreds of thousands of patients as they move through the healthcare continuum. Healthpoint 360 Collaborate ensures that all information is accurate and up-to-date, allowing providers to anticipate member needs and next steps for superior follow-up response. This enables healthcare companies to prioritize and personalize member communications across key channels, including contact centers, intelligent voice response phone calls (IVRs), physical mail, email, web portals, social media and mobile.

Healthpoint 360 Collaborate is an end-to-end communications platform that can be implemented modularly. It complements existing investments in care management software and EHR technology, allowing providers to realize greater value from legacy systems. It is also available as a hosted SaaS application.

About Pitney Bowes

Pitney Bowes provides technology solutions for small, mid-size and large firms that help them connect with customers to build loyalty and grow revenue. The company's solutions for financial services,insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, legal, public sector and retail organizations are delivered on open platforms to best organize, analyze and apply both public and proprietary data to two-way customer communications. Pitney Bowes is the only firm that includes direct mail, transactional mail, call centers and in-store technologies in its solution mix along with digital channels such as the Web, email, live chat and mobile applications. Pitney Bowes has approximately USD$5 billion in annual revenues and 27,000 employees worldwide. Pitney Bowes: Every connection is a new opportunity. www.pb.com

###

For advertising and promotion on www.HealthNewsDigest.com contact Mike McCurdy at: tvmike13@healthnewsdigest.com  or call 877-634-9180. We are syndicated worldwide and read in 164 countries. We also have over 7,000 journalists as subscribers who may use our content for their own media!