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Solutions: Clinical Applications

Home telehealth allows healthcare providers to maintain consistent contact with patients living with chronic diseases at a reduced cost compared to in-home visits. Early intervention can provide significant cost savings by avoiding or reducing emergency room visits and re-hospitalizations.

As healthcare expenses escalate, there is significant pressure on healthcare providers to lower costs, maintain quality of care and increase patient satisfaction. In order to meet these challenges, more and more healthcare systems are maximizing their human and capital resources through the use of home telehealth technologies.

Currently home telehealth is practiced in nearly three hundred programs nationwide in HMOs, Integrated Delivery Systems, Home Health Agencies, Hospices and Veterans Administration medical facilities. The vast majority of these programs use American TeleCare products and services. Home telehealth and American TeleCare solutions are increasingly recognized as preferred solutions to the increasing cost and quality of care challenges faced by health care organizations.

American TeleCare’s innovative means of care delivery can enhance your healthcare organization's human and capital resources in ways that:

  • Allow early intervention
  • Reduce hospital readmissions and ER visits
  • Improve patient compliance
  • Increase patient access to care
  • Ensure patient satisfaction
  • Enhance clinician access to patient
  • Decrease overall cost of care
  • Provide new business and increased referral opportunities

American TeleCare solutions are at work helping support thousands of health care providers and patients at hundreds of sites throughout the United States.

Home telehealth has demonstrated its effectiveness among patient populations that require the most care and attract the most cost – namely those with chronic or terminal conditions. The following abbreviated list provides an overview of patient conditions currently included in home telehealth programs:

  • CHF
  • COPD/Asthma
  • Diabetes
  • End-State Renal Disease
  • Severe Anxiety
  • Cancer
  • Spinal Cord Injury
  • AIDS
  • High Risk Pregnancy
  • Pregnancy Induced Hypertension
  • Hospice
  • Post Stroke
  • Wound Management
  • Medication Compliance
  • Post Operative Conditions

How American TeleCare solutions can benefit patients:

  • Early recognition and intervention
  • Decrease ER visits and hospital re-admissions
  • Patient and care giver support
  • Reduced anxiety
  • Increased compliance in medication and treatments
  • Increased independence
  • Improved patient empowerment

How American TeleCare solutions can benefit home health care providers:

  • Increase the number of patients you are able to serve
  • Reduction in operational costs
  • Improved clinical and financial results
  • Increased quality time with patients
  • Improved access to patients
  • Enhanced ability to monitor patients
  • More efficient use of clinician time
  • Cost-effective service delivery
  • Attract managed care contracts – bid-differentiation advantage
  • Collaborate with third party payors to develop disease management telehealth programs
  • Generate positive publicity in your community
  • Augment nurse staffing due to shortage

How American TeleCare solutions can benefit home healthcare systems:

  • Reduction in operational costs
  • Decrease in the overall cost of care
  • Improved patient satisfaction
  • Enhanced ability to provide high quality care
  • Improved clinical outcomes and financial results

Home Health Agencies under the Prospective Pay System (PPS) are capitated and can find advantages in using telehealth technology to manage care. Agencies can lower their cost of care delivery by utilizing telehealth to create efficiencies and improve productivity.

Approximately seven million patients are served each year by home-care agencies at a cost of $25 billion. Payment is by Medicare in most cases. Recent changes in Medicare reimbursement have placed extreme financial pressures on these agencies.

PPS (in effect since October 2000) provides, for the first time, a direct incentive for introducing home telehealth. The Balanced Budget Act incentivizes healthcare providers to use new technologies to reduce the cost of care delivery. Home telehealth is recognized as one of the most significant technologies in the effort. Industry experts encourage home health agencies to adopt this technology to ensure success under PPS.

American TeleCare solutions have proven that telehealth technology is an efficient means of managing clinical and financial resources. In addition to cost savings and improved productivity, American TeleCare solutions have enabled health care organizations to expand capacity and accept more patients utilizing existing staff resources.

Health Maintenance Organizations/Insurance:
Any healthcare organization that is also a payor, or working under a capitated reimbursement system, has strong incentive to employ home telehealth monitoring. Among high utilizers of care who attract the most cost, home telehealth has proven to be highly effective by:

  • Facilitating early intervention
  • Improving patient self-care and compliance
  • Reducing unnecessary emergency room visits
  • Reducing hospital readmissions and outpatient visits
  • Managing patients in the home
  • All this translates to significant cost savings for your organization as well as improved clinical and financial outcomes.

Integrated Delivery Networks:
Finding ways to improve care and reduce the cost of care for the high utilizer population has become a major challenge for at-risk integrated health organizations. Home telehealth provides a unique means of accomplishing both aims.

American TeleCare has developed extensive expertise in helping large institutions to set up the systems needed to successfully implement home telehealth programs. American TeleCare is currently the leading provider of telehealth systems and services to the largest integrated delivery network in the United States.

Veterans Administration Hospitals:
VA hospitals and their patients have been benefiting from home telehealth monitoring of veterans with chronic disease. In addition to improving quality of care and access to care for veterans, home telehealth has also helped:

  • Reduce unnecessary emergency room visits
  • Reduce hospital readmissions and outpatient visits
  • Facilitate early intervention
  • Improve patient self-care and compliance

Other Health Care Organizations:
Any organization managing at-risk contracts, such as disease-management organizations and capitated physician groups, can benefit from a home telehealth program. Home telehealth is a cost-effective way to closely monitor high-risk, high-utilizer patients by enabling early intervention, reducing in-person and clinic visits. American TeleCare home telehealth solutions have demonstrated an increase in productivity and job satisfaction among clinicians and staff.