DispatchHealth’s Post

Care is moving home... USC Schaeffer Center study published in JAMA detailing the benefits of hospital at home. Benefits include: Patient Preference: Many patients prefer receiving care at home due to the comfort and familiarity of their environment, which can positively impact their recovery experience. Safety and Confidence: The majority of surveyed individuals feel safe managing medications and care at home, indicating trust in home-based healthcare services. Faster Recovery: A significant portion of respondents believe that recovery is quicker at home, potentially reducing the overall burden on healthcare facilities. Cost Efficiency: Hospital-at-home care can lower costs by reducing the need for hospital stays, which often include higher overhead and resource expenses. Policy Support: Temporary programs allowing hospital-at-home care during the pandemic have been extended, reflecting positive policy momentum and recognition of its benefits. At Corstrata, we have been providing wound and ostomy specialized virtual consultations for hospital systems that have implemented hospital at home services for over two years. These multidisciplinary, collaborative consultations increase access to scarce WOC Nurse resources- improving care at a lower cost. https://lnkd.in/eMr4AWk7 #hospitalathome #clinicaloutcomes #valuebasedcare #Corstrata #woundcare #ostomy #WOCN

New research from Mass General Brigham affirms the success of hospital-at-home programs established under the CMS waiver. The study reveals low mortality rates, low skilled nursing facility use, and low readmission rates at one-month post-discharge. Embracing diversity, outcomes are consistent across marginalized populations, proving home hospital care's potential to reach a diverse group of patients. Xtelligent Healthcare shares more: https://bit.ly/3ScJwWx #hospitalathome #homehealthcare #CMS

PCP practices engaged in shared savings or at-risk contracts can have tremendous medical expenses related to hospitalizations and the downstream impact of the hospital stay – beyond the DRG payment for hospital care. Many PCP organizations insist they don’t need to worry about acute care and how the patient’s care is managed in that setting. Their arguments include: - The PCP-focused work needs to be done to keep the patients from needing a hospitalization in the first place by optimizing their chronic conditions and focusing on prevention. - The DRG is the DRG. That’s a set cost we can’t impact. - The acute care world belongs to the hospital / health system. It’s not our sandbox. - It’s cost prohibitive to own and operate a Hospitalist Service. However, there are multiple opportunities to address issues that impact medical spend during and after a hospital stay. Success is dependent on a hospitalist team dedicated to work with the PCP practice, functioning within service level agreements around communication, referral patterns, and timely follow up with the PCP. Jonathan Hart, MD MBA lays out the problems and solutions in some detail in the full article: #pcp #primarycare #hospitalists #vbc

The latest addition to the evidence base on virtual wards or hospital at home is this very large 5,000+ person study from Boston. The patients were mostly older with 42% over 80 and medically complex. The home cohort had low mortality, low readmission rates and low need to escalate. The research was undertaken by Mass General Brigham and the researchers’ letter in the Annuls summarising their results starts with this stark comparison. “Background: Hospitalization is the standard of care for acute illness, but hospital care is often expensive, unsafe, and uncomfortable (1). Acute hospital care at home (AHCaH) provides hospital-level care in patients’ homes as a substitute for brick-and-mortar care. Prior research has shown that compared with traditional inpatient hospital care, patients cared for in AHCaH have improved experiences and physical activity levels, with lower rates of mortality, readmission, and discharge to skilled-nursing facilities (2, 3). However, there are few data describing the experience of AHCaH at the national level.” #VirtualWards #HospitalAtHome #TheresNoPlaceLikeHome Digital Care

PCP practices engaged in shared savings or at-risk contracts can have tremendous medical expenses related to hospitalizations and the downstream impact of the hospital stay – beyond the DRG payment for hospital care. Many PCP organizations insist they don’t need to worry about acute care and how the patient’s care is managed in that setting. Their arguments include: - The PCP-focused work needs to be done to keep the patients from needing a hospitalization in the first place by optimizing their chronic conditions and focusing on prevention. - The DRG is the DRG. That’s a set cost we can’t impact. - The acute care world belongs to the hospital / health system. It’s not our sandbox. - It’s cost prohibitive to own and operate a Hospitalist Service. However, there are multiple opportunities to address issues that impact medical spend during and after a hospital stay. Success is dependent on a hospitalist team dedicated to work with the PCP practice, functioning within service level agreements around communication, referral patterns, and timely follow up with the PCP. Jonathan Hart, MD MBA lays out the problems and solutions in some detail in the full article: #pcp #primarycare #hospitalists

When it’s time to leave the hospital: Ensuring post-acute care access via Mary Mayhew - Patients with an average hospital stay of less than 10 days before being medically ready for discharge remain in the hospital for an average of 3.5 more days while hospital staff try to secure post-acute placement, according to a survey by the Florida Hospital Association. Patients whose length of stay before being ready for discharge exceeds 10 days remain in the hospital for an average of 27 more days before being successfully transitioned to post-acute care. More than 50% of these patients waiting for more than 10 days are awaiting discharge to a SNF. This means patients are staying in hospital beds longer than necessary for their medical needs. - The estimated cost to hospitals of keeping patients hospitalized after they are medically ready for discharge is more than $540 million a year. These are avoidable costs. But avoiding them requires additional post-acute capacity and more streamlined authorization requirements from health plans. A quarter of patients are not being timely transitioned to care because of payer prior authorization issues, according to the FHA survey. Twenty percent are facing discharge delays because of bed or staffing shortages at the post-acute facility.

Primary care practices face significant challenges in managing medical expenses, especially during and after hospitalizations. Shared savings or at-risk contracts demand a holistic approach to patient care. Here's a great article released from Business of Primary Care, written by #JonHart, MD MBA, that covers the importance of a hospitalist relationship in primary care: https://lnkd.in/gxtqdgiA 30% of all medical spending occurs during hospitalization. We CAN address this by streamlining post-discharge care. We can better support primary care physicians in optimizing patient outcomes and mitigating unnecessary medical costs. How? Ursamin's care coordination platform is a conduit for communication and coordination between primary care practices and hospitalist teams. We are here to bridge the gaps in the entire care continuum - from the start and also in follow-ups, medication reconciliation, and referrals. #hospitalists #primarycare #valuebasedcare #paymentmodel #hospitalteam #pcp #healthcare

Read about Cleveland Clinic's journey to implement acute hospital care delivered at home for their patients and what drove their decision to partner with Medically Home. Here are some of the highlights: "As part of this journey to open the virtual hospital, we determined a partnership would better facilitate and accelerate the shift in care from the hospital to the home, while delivering on the organizational objectives we set around patient quality and safety, provider satisfaction, and organizational sustainability. The ecosystem required for hospital-at-home is sizable and health systems will have to balance the desire to internally develop a comprehensive virtual hospital program against the size of the investment and know-how required to develop this model of care for patients at scale. Developing this ecosystem requires a myriad of services with reliable redundancies to deliver safe and efficient care across broad geographic and demographic areas. These services, routinely accessible within the hospital, are not available on-demand within each community. Developing this clinical ecosystem outside of the hospital therefore requires a rethink around developing highly reliable decentralized core clinical services including advanced nutritional services, wound care teams, occupational and physical therapy, mobile diagnostic and imaging teams, speech therapy, social services, and case management to name a few." Read more here: https://lnkd.in/grMUpc7z #hospitalathome #decentralizedcare

Hospital care, redefined: Bringing the expertise to your living room. Exciting news for healthcare professionals and patients alike! A recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that receiving hospital-level care at home is just as safe and effective as traditional hospital stays. Here are some key takeaways from the study: - Low death rates and readmission rates: Patients receiving at-home care had a death rate of only 0.5% and a readmission rate of around 6%, comparable to traditional hospital stays. - Improved patient satisfaction: Studies have shown that patients receiving home care often report higher levels of satisfaction and comfort compared to hospital stays. - Reduced costs: Home hospitalization can potentially lead to significant cost savings for both patients and healthcare systems. The future of healthcare is here, and it's happening in the comfort of our own homes. Are you ready to be a part of it? #healthcare #homecare #innovation #patientcenteredcare #futureofmedicine Link: https://zurl.co/8K9Y

The Government of Jersey's General Hospital has implemented System C’s critical care solution, with the goal of enhancing the quality of care for the hospital’s most critically ill patients and growing the digital maturity of its healthcare provision. In addition to many other benefits, this article states, the implementation means that "staff can take a more consistent and efficient approach to creating care plans now that documentation follows the International Classification for Nursing Practice (#ICNP) and #SNOMEDCT standards and applies best practice and local policies." More here: https://lnkd.in/gWDE2_FJ