Personal-Touch Home Care Partners with Innovative Telehealth Company, Health Recovery Solutions, to improve patient outcomes and reduce hospital readmissions.
Personal-Touch Home Care has achieved a 1.3% 30-day hospital readmission rate for all payers after partnering with the telehealth company, Health Recovery Solutions (HRS). Over 120 patients were placed on telehealth from October 2017 to March 2018 at Personal-Touch Home Care, a certified Medicare agency with home health offices in 10 states. The success of the telehealth program is highlighted by the readmission rate for telehealth patients being considerably lower than the 13.1% readmission rate for non-telehealth patients in their Newport News branch.
In addition to achieving a significantly lower 30-day hospital readmission rate, Personal-Touch Home Care saw a 60.2% reduction in skilled nursing visits for patients on telehealth compared to non-telehealth patients from October 2017 to March 2018 (data acquired from Medicare Claims Data). Jennifer Reisinger, Telehealth Coordinator at Personal-Touch Home Care, attributes the success of their program and the reduction in skilled nursing visits to "empowering the patient to manage their own chronic condition."
Patients placed on Personal-Touch Home Care's telehealth program were provided with 4G tablets loaded with the HRS software. The tablets were paired with Bluetooth remote patient monitoring devices which allow patients to take their blood pressure, weight, heart rate, and more. The software gives clinicians the ability to monitor patient vitals, respond to risk alerts when patients are at risk for readmission, and conduct nursing visits through video, phone, and text chat all in real time.
The growth in telehealth utilization at Personal Touch can also be attributed to HRS's shipping and logistics program, HRS PatientDirectTM. Through the program, HRS handles all logistics and inventory management, allowing nurses to submit orders for new patients through the HRS service while tracking them from fulfillment through delivery at the patient's home. Reisinger notes, "This allows us to focus our attention on what really matters, the patient."
The unique ability to monitor patient vitals and receive alerts when patients are at risk for hospital readmission allows the clinicians at Personal-Touch Home Care to proactively manage patients in the comfort of their own homes.
Jarrett Bauer, CEO of HRS, adds, "We are thrilled that Personal-Touch Home Care has been using the HRS platform for over a year to keep patients healthy and at home. These low readmission numbers are not just a result of the HRS software, but they are also a result of the dedication from Personal-Touch Home Care's outstanding nursing and administrative staff."
