AdventHealth Boosts Access to In-Home Care, Partners with DispatchHealth

AdventHealth is working to increase patients’ access to in-home care. As part of that mission, it’s teaming up with in-home medical care provider DispatchHealth. 

The two organizations formally announced their new partnership on Tuesday.

“There are several things that we’re looking at,” Lisa Musgrave, vice president of home care administration and post-acute services for AdventHealth, told Home Health Care News. “We want to make health care more accessible for our patients. For them, the ability to receive acute medical care in the home is a big part of that. Often, it’s what is preferred.” 

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Headquartered near Orlando, Florida, AdventHealth is a faith-based, nonprofit health system with 50 hospitals in nine states, plus more than 1,200 other care sites. Founded in 1973, the system cares for more than 5.5 million patients per year, with annual operating revenues of around $12.5 billion.

Musgrave helps run AdventHealth’s already robust portfolio of in-home and post-acute services.

Currently, that portfolio includes 13 home health agencies, three of which are joint ventures and 10 wholly owned. AdventHealth additionally has four hospice agencies, split equally between JVs and wholly owned locations.

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The large health system also has private-duty home care services in a couple of its markets and nine skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), Musgrave noted.

“The pandemic encouraged us to really push forward with our plans to innovate in the home,” she said. “We were already on that path of increasing access to services in the home, like virtual care or remote patient monitoring. We had those things in place, and we also had home health, hospice and private duty. But the [COVID-19 pandemic] helped us push forward even more because we had people who had a fear of receiving care in facilities at times.”

On its end, the Denver-based DispatchHealth offers a wide range of in-home medical services.

The company, which announced a $200 million Series D round in March, has most recently captured attention for its in-home acute care offering. DispatchHealth also acquired Professional Portable X-Ray in April, giving it mobile-imaging capabilities as well.

AdventHealth is DispatchHealth’s newest health system partner. Others include Baystate Health and MultiCare.

“Many health care providers have a strong desire to deliver home-based care, and DispatchHealth can provide a proven platform to quickly extend care outside of the typical clinic and hospital setting,” Dr. Mark Prather, CEO and co-founder of DispatchHealth, said in a press release. “We’re thrilled to be AdventHealth’s partner of choice in offering patients effective, convenient and affordable care at home.”

At least initially, AdventHealth and DispatchHealth will work together to deliver in-home acute care across several cities in Florida and in the Kansas City metro area. The new partnership is an expansion of DispatchHealth’s previously existing operations in Tampa.

Moving forward, AdventHealth patients in those select markets will be able to request DispatchHealth’s acute medical care for relatively common to complex injuries and illnesses, with typical examples being viral infections, COPD exacerbations, congestive heart failure and more.

“We have some consumers who have transportation issues,” Musgrave said. “We have medically frail consumers, where it’s difficult for them to even leave their home. For some, it’s just the convenience and the safety associated with receiving care in their home.”

Apart from improved access to in-home care services, the partnership will help AdventHealth lower total cost of care.

Since its founding in 2013, the DispatchHealth model has proven to save an average of $1,100 to $1,700 per acute care visit, according to the company.

“It helps us achieve the Triple Aim,” Musgrave said. “We can offer services at a lower cost, we can have better outcomes, and it’s highly satisfying.”

Musgrave expects her health care peers to make similar investments in months to come. Several factors big and small continue to drive health care into the home, she explained.

“The incentives are aligning,” Musgrave added. “Payers are coming alongside providers, saying [in-home care] makes sense. This is the place to deliver care. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is changing the way it delivers policies. There’s more recognition from the ‘Humanas’ and ‘Optums.’”

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