High-Quality Hospital Care — Minus the Hospital

John Halamka, M.D., president, Mayo Clinic Platform, and Paul Cerrato, senior research analyst and communications specialist, Mayo Clinic Platform, wrote this article.In a time of COVID, the current care models just can ’t remain in place. We need innovative ways to address the high cost of acute care. One solution that is taking a front seat is telemedicine. Telecare has accelerated from 3-4% of visits in January 2020 to 90% in April to a new normal of 20% in 2021. Cultural change has modified patient expectations for the care they can get at a distance, which can be more convenient, less likely to result in COVID exposure, and more patient-centric.Research has demonstrated that hospital-at-home programs for patients with specific acute medical conditions can reduce complications and reduce the cost of care by 30% or more.[1] One of the most progressive programs to focus on this transition was spearheaded by Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1994. Bruce Leff, MD, and his colleagues have tested this program with 455 elderly patients from three Medicare-managed systems and a VA medical center.[2] They found that the home model met the quality of care standards comparable to those expected of in-hospital programs. Also, " On an intention-to-treat basis, patients treated in hospital-at-home had a shorter length of stay (3.2 vs. 4.9 days) (P =0.004), and there was some evidence that they also had fewer complications. The mean cost was lower for hospital-at-home care than...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs