MedStar Health announced Monday that its acute care at home is now available to Baltimore patients of its Franklin Square Medical Center, Good Samaritan, Harbor and Union Memorial hospitals. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Through the collaboration, Dispatch Health offers prescheduled home visits daily, including weekends and holidays, following discharge from emergency departments and inpatient hospital units – typically within 72 hours – MedStar said.

The service gives patients of MedStar's Baltimore facilities a "seamless, monitored transition" home, according to Dr. Ethan Booker, MedStar's chief medical officer for telehealth. 

Dispatch has already provided more than 700 at-home patient visits in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Booker said in the announcement. The extended collaboration brings Dispatch's in-home care to Baltimore for the first time, added Dr. Phil Mitchell, the company's chief medical officer.

The company also offers same-day or next-day care upon referral from a telehealth visit, according to MedStar. 

Acute-care conditions treated range from cardiology and respiratory to dermatology, musculoskeletal, neurological and others. At-home high-acuity care through the service could include medical treatments, like administration of IV fluids and medications, and certain diagnostic and lab services.

THE LARGER TREND

Like a lot of health systems, MedStar rapidly launched new telemedicine technology in response to COVID-19, which resulted in 100,000 video visits in the first two months of use.

Two years ago, researchers from 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 had initial telehealth encounters appeared to require additional follow-up visits. The researchers found that patients with acute clinical conditions who first sought care via telehealth had higher odds of having a follow-up encounter, an emergency department encounter and in-patient 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 hospital-at-home programs and remote patient monitoring technologies to make transitions successful and improve access and 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 Healthcare IT News.

"Expanding the care continuum to integrate care at home will improve patient care outcomes, clinician satisfaction and financial performance," she said.

ON THE RECORD

"Patients are comforted to know that someone will come to their home when they don’t medically need to remain in the hospital, but may still need care to bridge the gap between discharge and their next physician visit," Booker said in a statement.

"Together, we’ll help streamline care between the hospital and home for the patient, enhance their experience of care, improve health outcomes and reduce costs every step of the way," Mitchell added.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.