MedStar is expanding acute care at home to Baltimore
MedStar Health announced Monday that acute care at home is now available to Baltimore patients at Franklin Square Medical Center, Good Samaritan, Harbor and Union Memorial hospitals.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Through the partnership, Dispatch Health will offer pre-scheduled home visits daily, including on weekends and holidays, following discharge from emergency departments and hospital units – typically within 72 hours – according to MedStar.
The service provides patients at MedStar’s Baltimore facilities with a “seamless, supervised transition home,” according to Dr. Ethan Booker, MedStar’s chief medical officer for telehealth.
Dispatch has already delivered more than 700 patient home visits in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Booker said in the announcement Monday. The expanded partnership brings Dispatch’s home care services to Baltimore for the first time, said Dr. Phil Mitchell, the company’s Chief Medical Officer.
According to MedStar, the company also offers same-day or next-day care upon referral via a telehealth visit.
The acute care conditions covered range from cardiology and respiratory to dermatology, musculoskeletal, neurological and more. High emergency home care through the service may include medical treatments such as the administration of IV fluids and medications and certain diagnostic and laboratory services.
THE BIG TREND
Like many healthcare systems, MedStar quickly launched new telemedicine technology in response to COVID-19, resulting in 100,000 video visits in its first two months of operation.
Two years ago, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions, funded in part by the American Telemedicine Association, found that patients with acute conditions who initially had telehealth contacts appeared to need additional follow-up visits. The researchers found that patients with acute clinical conditions who initially sought care via telehealth were more likely to require a follow-up consultation, an emergency department encounter, and a hospital admission than those who sought care in person.
In the post-pandemic era, the medical community has come to realize that the transition home is a critical part of the care continuum and is looking to home programs and remote patient monitoring technologies to make transitions successful and improve access and healthcare . equity for eligible patients.
“Resources from specialties like cardiology and endocrinology to services like case management and social services are often siloed, making coordination even more difficult,” Cindy Gaines, RN, Chief Clinical Transformation Officer at Lumeon, a clinical automation company, told me. Healthcare IT news.
“Expanding the continuum of care to integrate care at home will improve patient care outcomes, physician satisfaction and financial performance,” she said.
ON THE RECORD
“Patients are reassured to know that someone will come to their home when they do not medically need to stay in the hospital, but may still need care to bridge the gap between discharge and their next doctor visit,” Booker said in a statement .
“Together, we help streamline care between the hospital and patient’s home, improving their healthcare experience, improving health outcomes and reducing costs every step of the way,” Mitchell added.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.