University of Pittsburgh Medical Center launches digital healthcare for nursing homes

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has launched a digital healthcare startup aimed at providing telehealth services for the $136 billion nursing home industry.

The new company—Pittsburgh-based Curavi Health—will offer nursing homes a suite of telehealth equipment and related digital doctor consultation services that enable nurses and other providers at long-term care facilities to diagnose and treat patients without having to transport a patient to the hospital.

“Transfers to the emergency room, which frequently result in admission to the hospital, are highly disruptive to older adults and sometimes harmful to their health,” says UPMC Community Provider Services chief medical informatics officer Dr. Steven Handler.

Curavi has developed what it calls a “crash cart” of monitors, cameras and related hardware linked to various electronic health records systems that enables digital doctor and video consultations directly from the patient’s bedside. The company’s platform links nursing home patients and providers via a telehealth platform to University of Pittsburgh Medical Center geriatric specialists.

Hardware included on the Curavi crash cart includes a pan, tilt and zoom camera, a secure Wi-FI and Bluetooth-enabled stethoscope, a digital otoscope, document scanner and a portable electrocardiogram (EKG) system. An otoscope is a medical device which is used to look into the ears.

The Curvai telehealth platform initially will be used to track and treat maladies such as urinary tract infections and pneumonia. As the company grows, the platform also will be updated over time to offer telehealth services for cardiology, dermatology and geriatric psychiatry, Handler says.

Curvai was started from a grant the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Handler received from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to study how telehealth can be used to reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions from nursing homes. Over two years the grant from the federal government was used to train more than 1,000 nurses and healthcare professionals in telemedicine and to conduct 212 video consults. Those telehealth services prevented 108 unnecessary transfers of patients to hospitals over the two years of the study.

Potentially avoidable hospitalizations from 17 nursing homes in western Pennsylvania were reduced nearly 25%, while potentially avoidable emergency department visits were reduced more than 40%, resulting in projected savings of over $5 million, the hospital system says.

“We’ve spent three years developing and refining the equipment, software, training and support to help nursing homes significantly reduce potentially avoidable hospitalizations,” Handler says.

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