Catholic Health Initiatives is taking a step toward accountable care organizations and integrating inpatient and outpatient healthcare with its recent purchase of a regional home healthcare company.
Denver-based CHI, with 75 hospitals in 18 states, has purchased Consolidated Health Services, which provides home health and related services in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, for an undisclosed sum.
Part of CHI's move to outpatient care
Acquiring a home health company, which will be merged with CHI's own home health services, will help this huge healthcare system transition to outpatient care, which is about to surpass inpatient care as CHI's dominate service, according to Paul Edgett, senior vice president for national business lines at the hospital system.
Outpatient services currently account for 49 percent of care delivered at Catholic Health Initiatives, and the system plans to become 65 percent outpatient in 10 years, Mr. Edgett says.
The system began discussing a shift to outpatient care three years ago, before ACOs were on hospitals' radar screen, he says. But he acknowledges the new strategy fits very well into ACOs and integrated care. ACOs will focus on the patients' entire course of treatment, including nursing home and home health care.
Other CHI home health initiatives
In addition to purchasing Consolidated Health Services, CHI is moving its existing home health services out of its hospitals and expanding several home health pilot projects. "In the new model, home health services will be aligned with the hospital, but not within a hospital department," Mr. Edgett says.
A telemedicine pilot project, for example, keeps patients with congestive heart failure out of the hospital and the ED. A nurse in a remote location, monitors patients' weight, blood pressure and other vital signs and visits them when necessary.
In addition, CHI is starting pilot projects on dietary interaction, for healthy eating, and on social interaction, so that elderly patients can live alone in their homes without having to go to a nursing home.
Mr. Edgett says centralizing operations under an outpatient care company should have a disruptive effect on the system, in the best sense of the word. "There is a difference between the acute-care mindset of a hospital and the freestanding, entrepreneurial aspect of freestanding homecare companies," he says. "We embrace the challenge of combining the two."
Denver-based CHI, with 75 hospitals in 18 states, has purchased Consolidated Health Services, which provides home health and related services in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, for an undisclosed sum.
Part of CHI's move to outpatient care
Acquiring a home health company, which will be merged with CHI's own home health services, will help this huge healthcare system transition to outpatient care, which is about to surpass inpatient care as CHI's dominate service, according to Paul Edgett, senior vice president for national business lines at the hospital system.
Outpatient services currently account for 49 percent of care delivered at Catholic Health Initiatives, and the system plans to become 65 percent outpatient in 10 years, Mr. Edgett says.
The system began discussing a shift to outpatient care three years ago, before ACOs were on hospitals' radar screen, he says. But he acknowledges the new strategy fits very well into ACOs and integrated care. ACOs will focus on the patients' entire course of treatment, including nursing home and home health care.
Other CHI home health initiatives
In addition to purchasing Consolidated Health Services, CHI is moving its existing home health services out of its hospitals and expanding several home health pilot projects. "In the new model, home health services will be aligned with the hospital, but not within a hospital department," Mr. Edgett says.
A telemedicine pilot project, for example, keeps patients with congestive heart failure out of the hospital and the ED. A nurse in a remote location, monitors patients' weight, blood pressure and other vital signs and visits them when necessary.
In addition, CHI is starting pilot projects on dietary interaction, for healthy eating, and on social interaction, so that elderly patients can live alone in their homes without having to go to a nursing home.
Mr. Edgett says centralizing operations under an outpatient care company should have a disruptive effect on the system, in the best sense of the word. "There is a difference between the acute-care mindset of a hospital and the freestanding, entrepreneurial aspect of freestanding homecare companies," he says. "We embrace the challenge of combining the two."