Baldwinsville, New York-based Simple Admit raised $610,000 from angel investors, according to an SEC filing.

Simple Admit will use the money to enhance staff training capabilities, improve onboarding capabilities, and improve their technology, partly through the creation of an app, which will be done by the second quarter, CEO Mike Horning told MobiHealthNews.

Simple Admit is a web-based program that lets patients fill out their pre-registration forms, which include questions about medical history and medications and other patient information, for surgery centers before coming in to the doctor's office. Horning said the company's niche is gathering data from what he believes is the most accurate source -- the patient.

"In terms of the applications that currently exist in the healthcare environment, there needs to be a better continuum of care electronically," Horning said. "We recognize that in today's market much of the focus is on the sharing of data, once it resides in some systems electronically, but we see that there is a hole as to how the data gets into any of these systems in the first place, so we've focused on filling that void and providing a great mechanism for patients to get involved in their own healthcare, and be able to submit their data to their medical facility."

To use the program, patients log in online and choose their healthcare facility. From there, they can complete the form and submit the information when they are done. At any point, if the patient is having trouble, they can summon a small cartoon dog in a doctor's coat named SAM, which stands for Simple Admit Management. SAM helps users figure out how to answer questions that they are having trouble with.

Clinicians Clinical staff also benefit from the program because responses to the form, when done online, are more legible, and when patients fill out their medical histories and patient information at home, the information is often more complete. Simple Admit also offers a medical dictionary and medication drug database to ensure medication names and dosages are accurate. This also helps reduce the amount of busywork for nurses, Horning said.

Around 72 percent Simple Admit's client's patients using the platform to submit health history information. At the end of 2012, Horning said the platform had been added to hospitals in 32 states and nearing the end of 2013, Simple Admit is now in 39 states. Of the states that do not have the platform are Hawaii, Alaska, North Dakota and South Dakota. While the company also is not in Montana yet, they plan to be in Montana by the first quarter. Still, Horning said, there is a lot more to do to bring the technology to surgery centers.

"There are about 6,000 accredited surgery centers in the US, and less than 500 of them do anything with automating their admissions process," Horning said. "So the vast majority, over 90 percent of the market, is still hand writing admissions forms. This creates a lot of phone tag and unneeded communications between nurses and patients that can be tedious and laborious, so we are really kind of on our own here, in effect, to provide a solution against the status quo, where you don't have your admissions be paper based."

Looking forward, Horning plans to add patient satisfaction surveys to the process in the next year as well as some convenience factors for patients, like doing the copay online and allowing facilities to verify a patient's insurance electronically. His biggest step, though, is growing the number of nurses on staff so that for the less technologically savvy patients, they can still utilize the call-in option that hospitals provide, but instead of the hospital on the other end, it will be a Simple Admit staff member.