Worcester, Mass.-based UMass Memorial Health and Cleveland-based University Hospitals are expanding care beyond hospital walls with recent rollouts of tech-powered hospital-at-home programs.
UMass Memorial Health tapped Current Health's remote care management platform to serve as the foundation of its hospital-at-home program, the health system said in a June 8 news release. Current Health will integrate with UMass's Epic EHR platform so that clinicians and patients can maintain a seamless experience between in-person and at-home care.
UMass Memorial patients eligible for the program will be enrolled through Current Health's platform and receive all the devices they need to remotely engage with their care teams, including monitoring equipment, in-home connectivity and a tablet for chat and video communication.
"Our team’s ability to quickly build out a field hospital to care for patients during the height of the pandemic has inspired us to think differently about how we can deliver care outside our hospital walls," UMass Memorial Health President and CEO Eric Dickson, MD, said in the news release. "We see an opportunity to pioneer a new care delivery model that not only addresses hospital resource constraints, but also enables more preventive care and improved patient experiences and outcomes at scale."
University Hospitals has also adopted a new home care strategy with the deployment of UH Hospital@Home, according to a June 8 WEWS report. The health system launched its hospital-at-home program in April and is offering the service to patients admitted in the emergency department with diagnoses of COVID-19, COPD, community-acquired pneumonia and cellulitis.
Five patients have opted into the program, which coordinates in-person and tech-based deliveries of medication, infusions, lab and radiology services while the patient remains at home.