– DispatchHealth expands its on-demand acute care services to offer Advanced Care and Extended Care in the home.
– The new services allow patients who previously required an expensive hospital stay to be treated at home. In a partnership with two health systems, DispatchHealth will offer patients a 24/7 dedicated medical team, remote monitoring, an emergency call button, and daily visits.
DispatchHealth, a provider of tech-enabled in-home health care, today announced the launch of two additional clinical service offerings. Advanced Care and Extended Care give patients who previously required expensive facility-based acute care the ability to be treated at home. The new services will initially be offered via Denver Health Medical Plan and InnovAge in the Denver metro area.
Advanced Care Services
The new service is ideal for patients who require an advanced level of clinical care and would benefit from staying home to recover from their acute illness over multiple days. The Advanced Care service provides patients comprehensive medical care in their home as an alternative to being admitted to a hospital. Extended Care provides up to 30-days of in-home clinical support for patients who are transitioning from the hospital but are still in need of extended specialized care.
Both Advanced Care and Extended Care offer qualified patients an on-call dedicated DispatchHealth medical team, which includes an internal medicine trained physician and a physician assistant or nurse practitioner. Patients receive 24/7 physician coverage with remote monitoring, an emergency call button and daily visits from DispatchHealth’s medical team, including bed-side nursing. Coordination of other common services is also available for patients as needed, including physical and respiratory therapy, imaging services, pharmacy, and meal deliveries.
“Our new services builds on DispatchHealth’s current offerings to help patients with complex medical needs avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and post-acute facility-based care. We are confident the services will result in improved clinical outcomes and drive further value to our payer and provider partners,” said Mark Prather, CEO of DispatchHealth. “We’ve proven our ability to effectively treat acutely ill patients in a low-cost setting and we’re ready to lead the industry shift to provide more advanced clinical care in the home. We look forward to analyzing the outcomes.”
More than 7,500 patients in Colorado now have access to DispatchHealth’s Advanced and Extended care services. Advanced Care services are available to participants enrolled in InnovAge’s Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) in the Denver metro area; and both Advanced and Extended Care are available via Denver Health Medical Plan and its hospital partner, Denver Health. DispatchHealth plans to expand the service to additional markets in 2020 and will be covered by most major insurances.
“Our passion and mission at InnovAge is to help frail seniors age in their own homes with dignity. InnovAge has done this through PACE for more than 20 years,” said Maureen Hewitt, president and CEO of InnovAge. “Offering DispatchHealth services to our participants allows them to receive care in the comfort of their homes, without limiting their ability to seek emergency care directly.”
Growth of Value-Based Care
The movement toward value-based care arrangements has increased the need for innovative approaches to safely move care out of traditional expensive facility settings. Particularly for aging patients, moving care into the home addresses higher complication risks in the hospital including infections, falls, pressure sores, delirium, and outcomes that often require additional skilled care before patients can return home.
Transitions back to the home from the hospital or skilled nursing facility is often challenging, resulting in hospitals spending $41.3 billion per year for patients readmitted to the hospital within 30 days. A recent report from Brigham and Women’s Hospital found in-home treatment models like DispatchHealth’s decreased hospital utilization and improved physical activity, without impacting quality, safety or patient experience.
“Offering DispatchHealth’s new service lines allows our patients and their families time to recover in a safe and effective setting,” said Greg McCarthy, Denver Health Medical Plan CEO. “They provide our patients with quality care and reduce the likelihood that patients will return to hospital.”
