A telehealth pilot program at a Phoenix health system significantly cut costs, reduced hospitalizations and shortened hospital stays, according to a hospital review of the program, FierceHealthITreports (Dvorak, FierceHealthIT, 5/5).
Details of Program
Banner Health’s Intensive Ambulatory Care pilot program, which launched in 2013, provides at-home telehealth services for patients with multiple chronic conditions (Wicklund, mHealthNews, 5/4). The program was created through a partnership with technology vendor Philips.
Banner and Philips measured the effectiveness of the program by evaluating the outcomes for 135 patients. The patients all had data from one year prior to entering the IAC program and six months after starting.
Review Findings
After six months of the program, costs of care dropped by 27%, in large part because of:
- Lower hospitalization rates;
- Shorter hospital stays; and
- A reduction in professional service and outpatient costs.
Hospitalizations decreased by 45%, from 11.5 hospitalizations per 100 patients monthly prior to the IAC program to 6.3 hospitalizations per month.
Meanwhile, acute and long-term care costs decreased by 32% after six months, largely because of fewer hospitalizations (Slabodkin, Health Data Management, 5/6).
Hargobind Khurana, senior medical director of health management at Banner Health, said the results of the program “are indicative of the exponential success such a program could have by engaging patients in their own care and building a strong support system around them” (mHealthNews, 5/4).
Source: http://ift.tt/1F7NPbJ
from health IT caucus http://ift.tt/1PrDSWb
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment