Reprint from September 24, 2020
Third of four parts
Hospitals in the United States are considering a concept known as “hospital at home.” It is according to an article by Nate Berg, published in FastCompany, magazine and online journal.
“That’s the basis of another hospital-at-home startup, Dispatch Health. Based in Denver, the company operates hundreds of paramedic-style vehicles with on-call remote medical professionals ready to provide both emergency and ongoing care to patients in cities such as Seattle, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and smaller markets such as Springfield, Mass. and Spokane, Wash.. In partnership with local hospitals and health systems, the vehicles can arrive at a patient’s home within an hour, carrying a suitcase-sized moderate complexity lab capable of running blood tests, administering fluids or medication through an IV, treating shortness of breath, arranging for X-rays, ultra sounds, and EKGs—’basically everything in the ER, short of a CAT scanner, an MRI, and certain higher-level procedures,’ said Dr. Mark Prather, the Company’s founder and CEO.
“There are significant potential savings in treating patients at home. Prather said the average ER visit costs between $1,000 and $2,000. ‘A little bit of that is the physician’s fee, and a lot of it is what we call the facility fee, or what the hospital charges. So if we could do this care for a couple hundred dollars, which is essentially what we charge, we could save five to six times on every single case,’ he said.
“And it’s not just about saving money. ‘The largest meta analysis, which is a look at all of the studies on hospital at home, suggests that hospital at home reduces costs by 25%, reduces readmission by 25%, and, the really fun part for me, it reduces mortality by 20%,’ said Prather. The numbers are persuasive, and not just for medical professionals. The company just raised $135.8 Million in financing and plans to expand to a total of 26 markets by the end of the year.”
“But the hospital-at-home model still has one main hurdle: Reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid. As of 2017, 58 Million people in the U.S. were enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, but those systems don’t have any way to fully reimburse health-care systems for services provided in patient homes. Patients in the Medicare Advantage program and those covered by private insurance often can qualify for their hospital-at-home care to be reimbursed, but that still leaves a large chunk of the market, older Americans, out of luck.
Continued next week