Intermountain Healthcare Expands Its Reach, Widens Hospital At Home Services
Nikki Attkisson | Last Updated : August 10, 2021Patients of almost 12 Intermountain hospitals spread across hundreds of miles can access virtual healthcare 24-7 from the comfort of their home through Tele nurses, tele-hospitalists, tele-clinicians, and numerous other remote monitoring staff and facilities.
This week, Intermountain Healthcare announced that it will expand the services and scope of its hospital at home program. The initiative was launched in May 2020. You may now ask; why it deserves this importance?
Intermountain Healthcare Expands Its Reach, Widens Hospital At Home Services
The program is now available for patients in 12 of the network’s hospitals all through Utah. The number of locations is sure to increase. Its remote clinicians have expanded their offers to include COVID 19 and other chronic and acute health issues. Its remote facility is designed to work 24-7 using remote monitoring technology. The virtual hospital offers services like:
- Tele-hospitalists
- Tele-nurses
- Tele-advanced practice providers
The kind of service available will depend on the acuity of the ailment. Patients should meet certain clinical and non-clinical criteria to request the services required. Following groups qualify for the services the network offers:
- Patients coming in through an emergency department visit
- Those admitted to the hospital who qualify for early discharge
The hospital treats the conditions given below at home:
- Congestive heart failure
- Community-acquired pneumonia
- Certain intestinal or vain issues
- Certain kidney problems
- Obstructive pulmonary disease
- Certain cancers
- Certain infections
In the program, Intermountain works in collaboration with Castell, the population health spinoff the network founded two years ago.
Caregivers at Intermountain Healthcare provide remote monitoring equipment and offers hands-on training to patients and their families. It also offers maintenance services for the equipment they provide. It also provides lab and imaging services.
Patients make sure that the phone is within reach so that Tele nurses can provide new alerts. Patients can access additional care depending on the emergency of the care needed using the following options:
- 911 for urgent intervention
- Intermountain home care skilled nurses; they can assist in the care that can wait up to three hours
- For patients in Utah who fall in between, Intermountain offers its services in partnership with Gold Cross Ambulance emergency medical services
This partnership lets the Intermountain EMS rapid response team reaches the patient’s home within 20 minutes of contact. The team does a physical assessment of the patient at home. It consults the hospital through video-visit if the patient can stay at home or should come to the hospital.
To avail of the hospital at-home services, a patient should have SelectHealth insurance coverage. SelectHealth commercial, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid too will work. He can also be a self-pay.
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The trend of future
Intermountain has always been an innovator in the healthcare sector, in offering remote hospital services. It even predicts that the trend is here to stay for long. It helps everyone save huge. Furthermore, such services also offer better results. Certain patients even prefer them.
Last March, Intermountain in collaboration with the firms like Amazon Care launched an initiative called the Moving Health Home initiative. The program aims to change how policymakers view the home as a place for hospital care. Since the inception of the hospital at home program, Intermountain has transported 1,400 patient beds from the hospitals of its network to patients’ homes.
Through such initiatives, Intermountain aims to offer it’s patients the kind of care they deserve at affordable rates, its officials said. The hospital offers the technology required to remotely monitor patients’ vital signs. Daily in-home visits from nurses, daily telehealth rounding from medical providers, and 24-7 available of on-call nurses and physicians.
Such programs, basically work on the recent observation; empathy plays a vital role in determining patient experiences.
With over 15 years as a practicing journalist, Nikki Attkisson found herself at Powdersville Post now after working at several other publications. She is an award-winning journalist with an entrepreneurial spirit and worked as a journalist covering technology, innovation, environmental issues, politics, health etc. Nikki Attkisson has also worked on product development, content strategy, and editorial management for numerous media companies. She began her career at local news stations and worked as a reporter in national newspapers.