Resilient Heathcare
Jacklyn Samuel and family.
Study Highlights the Need for Companies, Like Resilient Healthcare, to Meet the Needs of Millions of Older Home-Based Americans.
— Jackleen Samuel, the President & CEO of Resilient Healthcare
AUSTIN, TEXAS, UNITED STATES, October 10, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — A study published last month in the Journal of General Internal Medicine highlights the importance of hospital-at-home care and why it is the best solution for meeting the growing health care needs of millions of home-based Americans.
The study, produced by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is highly significant for Resilient Healthcare, which is representing more than a dozen hospitals in Texas, bringing high-acuity healthcare to those who might not otherwise receive care.
The researchers estimate that the number of older homebound Americans is 2 million and growing. Further, they point to a home-based care model as “the solution to better care and a more efficient allocation of health care dollars.”
Benjamin Oseroff, a third-year medical student at Icahn Mount Sinai, led the study, titled “Patterns of Healthcare Utilization and Spending Among Homebound Older Adults in the USA: An Observational Study.” Working with his mentor and co-author, Katherine Ornstein, PhD, MPH, Adjunct Associate Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, Icahn Mount Sinai, and Director of the Center for Equity in Aging at Johns Hopkins University, Mr. Oseroff tapped data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS). The authors used the NHATS data, a nationally representative survey of older adults, to identify older adults who are homebound (rarely or never leave the home) and then linked these data to Medicare fee-for-service claims to measure their health care utilization and spending.
Oseroff said that “the homebound are disproportionately Hispanic and Black non-Hispanic, medically, and socially complex, and isolated. And their numbers are rising.”
The study (https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2022/when-telemedicine-isnt-the-solution) provides a striking picture of homebound patients who are frequent users of hospital-based care. Oseroff and colleagues estimate that 40 percent of homebound older adults had a hospitalization annually, compared to 20 percent of non-homebound older adults. As a result, total annual Medicare spending is $11,346 higher among the homebound compared to the non-homebound. Oseroff and his coauthors report that homebound adults aged 70 and older accounted for 11 percent of total Medicare FFS spending in 2015, despite making up only 5.7 percent of the Medicare FFS population at this age.
“The homebound are even more concentrated among the top spenders, making up nearly 14 percent of those in the 95th percentile or above of Medicare spending,” says Mr. Oseroff. “In light of these findings, the homebound represent a critically important population to target for quality improvement and reductions in Medicare spending.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine as a means of safely providing medical care, became a popular option. And while telemedicine might seem like an obvious solution for treating the homebound, an investigation into telehealth access during the early months of the pandemic by Drs. Ornstein and Gliatto, found otherwise. Their paper, “Barriers to telehealth access among homebound older adults,” published in April 2021 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, describes numerous barriers to telehealth.
“The types of barriers we uncovered ran the gamut from lack of broadband access to lack of support help to use the technology, and cognitive and sensory impairments. In this population, older age may compound some of the inequalities that this population is already facing,” said Dr. Ornstein. “A high-tech solution will not always work for this high-need, medically and socially complex population.”
Where Resilient Comes In
Resilient Healthcare CEO and Founder Jackleen Samuel said many hospitals have the foresight to see this trend. Last month, her company, which delivers care to acute and post-acute patients in their home with an Artificial Intelligence-based healthcare delivery concept, partnered with White Rock Medical Center (WRMC) in Dallas.
Resilient’s rise over the last few years has been accelerated by its response to the pandemic and developing tech enabled care solutions in healthcare. Earlier this year, the company announced its partnership with MidCoast Health System (MHS) to launch its Rural Healthcare Initiative, which will bring acute and outpatient AI-enabled care to rural communities in Texas.
The development was featured in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
The company is also weaving the best of telemedicine in its healthcare program.
“Telemedicine is critical for any hospital at home program in order to provide the most ‘immediate’ care as compared to a hospital stay,” said Resilient’s Samuel. “The ability for any practitioner to see the patient at any time of day/night provides peace of mind to the patient and any caregivers within the home.”
That’s why Resilient has been actively embracing the discipline.
“We offer several unique features,” she said. “One of them, for example, is the ability to concurrently have several open ‘rooms’ available to the provider. This gives the provider the ability to go from room to room, just like they would in a physical office/hospital. We also have embedded telemedicine links in every tablet sent home with the patient so when the need arises the provider can quickly link to the patient. With the tablets (or phone) the patient can be shown how to access telehealth quickly and easily by just entering a name and their phone number and hitting the Join button. This also helps where there is limited broadband, but mobile service is available as all tablets have mobile access.”
About Resilient Healthcare
Resilient Healthcare has become the leader in the at-home acute care space. Its LTAC@H™ Program is the first of its kind, in which seriously ill patients have access to an array of hospital-grade healthcare services from the comfort of their homes, both virtually and in-person. Resilient Healthcare began as a vision for a better healthcare delivery system in 2018. Its technology was launched in 2020 with the overarching goal of developing software to convert homes into clinical spaces, coordinate care efficiently, and optimize health risk stratification. For more information, visit https://www.resilienthc.com/
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