History of KaiZen

KaiZen Healthcare Solutions began as an idea during 2003 when nursing home administrator Karen Patalano knew there had to be a better way to complete medicaid billing documentation. After a year of development and testing, KaiZen was deployed into its first facility in 2004. Proving itself successful, it was introduced to the entire nursing home industry and since then has been used to help achieve excellence in many nursing homes throughout Massachusetts. To date, the KaiZen team is still continuing to improve their program to help better serve their customers.

During 2003, Karen Patalano, CEO and founder of KaiZen Healthcare Solutions, entered her 6th year as a nursing home administrator. After multiple take backs from Medicaid audits totaling up to 100s of thousands of dollars, Karen decided that there must be a more accurate and efficient way to complete the documentation required to bill for Medicaid in the 21st century.

Karen turned to her husband James Patalano, a process engineer with 20+ years experience in computer programming, and together they decided to set out on a mission to design a faster, more accurate method for completing nursing documentation that was cost efficient and at the same time beneficial to patient care. The project took 1 year to complete, but after it was installed in its first test facility it proved to be well worth the effort.

Deployment Into the First Facility

During April of 2004, KaiZen Healthcare Solutions installed their software program in their first facility, a Mariner facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The management team at this facility embraced the new idea. They worked with KaiZen to customize and develop the program in the facility until the program was running perfectly. The program was able to increase accuracy of the documentation by 100% while decreasing the time required by licensed nurses by 70%. The system was working and Karen and James were finally reassured that their effort had resulted the first functional electronic licensed nursing summary of its kind.

Introducing KaiZen To the Nursing Home Industry

Continuing Improvement

Karen and James have not stopped. They are still developing new tools to help the nursing homes better manage the patients and staff and incorporate new preventative medicine techniques into patient care in order to solve healthcare issues before they start.