Cedars-Sinai has teamed up HomeHero, a Santa Monica-based non-medical home care provider to launch the Safe Transition Home program that provides safe rides and transitions for patients between the hospital and the home. The program is funded through a combination of private clients and Cedars-Sinai.
Program Benefits
The goal of the program is designed to reduce inpatient readmissions, raising patient satisfaction and improving health outcomes — challenges facing hospitals nationwide. Other key benefits of the program include:
-addressing long-standing transitional care challenges by providing licensed and trained home care professionals as a post-acute extension of Cedars-Sinai’s healthcare continuum
– helps Cedars-Sinai address comprehensive regulatory changes set in place by the Affordable Care Act and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), such as steep fines for 30-day hospital readmissions and bundled payment systems emphasizing value-based care
How It Works
HomeHero’s caregivers, referred to as “Heroes,” provide comprehensive assistance with activities of daily living such as personal care, housekeeping and medication management. Safe Transition Home covers additional service such as transportation to and from follow-up appointments with the patient’s physicians including medication pick-up.
Caregivers also become the eyes and ears of the hospital in the home with the aid of technology. Equipped with a mobile app leveraging Apple’s new CareKit platform, the “Heroes” conduct guided safety checks in the home, record patient health information, monitor social determinants and deliver critical real-time data back to families and case managers in the hospital.
Heroes can stay with the patient for as short as 2 hours or even overnight if needed. The program charges $22 per hour and most transitions from the hospital last between 3 to 5 hours.
“We are truly excited to be working with HomeHero, both at the operational level and within the Cedars-Sinai and Techstars Healthcare Accelerator program,” says Bradley T. Rosen, MD, MBA, FHM, Director of Care Transitions and Complex Medical Management at Cedars-Sinai in a statement. “They are a mature team with impressive individuals on both the healthcare and tech sides, and they are thinking creatively about how best to tackle fundamental challenges in patient care. I believe the Safe Transition Home program is the first of many initiatives that will effectively improve the quality of care our patients receive.”