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Hackensack Meridian Health has partnered with Medically Home Group to launch a new program – Hospital From Home – providing patients with hospital-level care in the comfort of their home.

During the pandemic, the program was created under a Medicare CMS waiver – and has been granted an extension.

Following a successful 2022 pilot at JFK University Medical Center, the program began its rollout in late April of this year – with JFK, as well as Hackensack University Medical Center and Jersey Shore University Medical Center participating. So far, nearly 100 patients have been treated through the program, which Hackensack Meridian Health plans to expand to all hospitals across the health system.

Some particulars of the program include:

• Patients are monitored virtually through a clinically integrated, physician-led virtual command center – operating 24 hours a day alongside in-person nurse visits
• Services and treatments including IV antibiotics, infusions, medication management, laboratory services, physical, occupational, speech and respiratory therapy, and imaging in a patient’s home
• Meals and nutritional consultations are also available

“At Hackensack Meridian Health, we are committed to providing high-quality, hospital-level care where patients are most comfortable; for some – this is in their own home,” said Robert Garrett, CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health, in a statement. “This innovative partnership will enable us to continue making care more convenient and accessible to the patients and communities we serve.”

Medically Home operates a decentralized care model for patients with serious or complex illnesses through a number of successful partnerships with leading national health systems as well as physician groups, and payors to safely provide emergency and hospital-level care for their patients at home.

Through this partnership, Medically Home will collaborate with Hackensack Meridian Health as an operating partner – providing command center services, logistics, and technology needed to deliver that hospital-level care for patients.

“Medically Home was created to change the way that hospital care is delivered,” said Raphael Rakowski, co-founder and executive chairman for Medically Home. “We are pleased to partner with Hackensack Meridian Health on behalf of all patients in New Jersey who are seeking hospital-level care being brought to them – when and where they need it.”

Patrick Young, president of Population Health for Hackensack Meridian Health, said the health system is proud to deliver the next generation of care.

“This is a whole new health care experience for patients and their caregivers that will deliver better clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction,” said Young in a statement.

Pandemic-accelerated concept

Garrett told NJBIZ that as the health system looks to the future, more and more patient care is being delivered outside the four walls of the hospital – in the ambulatory care setting and in-home setting, which was only accelerated and reinforced by the pandemic.

“Patients wanted to either have care delivered close to home or even within their home,” Garrett said. “So, the whole Hospital From Home concept started to take off. The idea of providing acute care services within the comfort of your own home is very attractive for the patients. From an access perspective, it’s much more achievable, doable. The quality of care that’s delivered is excellent – less chance of patients that are staying in a hospital getting an infection. The patient experience is a better one.”

He said that as HMH looked for partners to deliver this program, Medically Home stood out – describing the c0mpany as a leading provider of these types of programs with partnerships alongside great health systems throughout the country, such as Mayo Clinic, Yale New Haven, and more.

Helps patients, helps staff

“So, we entered into a partnership, and we rolled this out at the end of April – and we’re at 100-plus patients in a very short period of time,” Garrett continued. “We are averaging close to 10 patients a day, which is an incredible rollout. It helps us not just from a patient satisfaction, a patient experience, and a patient outcome perspective – but also helps our busy hospitals and our busy emergency department – because they’re packed. And if we can deliver that level of care at someone’s home – why not?”

Garrett noted that Medically Home is responsible for the remote, 24-hour monitoring component of the program, which is physician-led – and supplemented by home visits from Hackensack Meridian’s home health care team.

“We have one of the largest home health care teams, certainly in New Jersey and in the region,” said Garrett. “They do a great job – both nursing and non-nursing types of services that supplement the 24-hour remote monitoring.”

The health system CEO said that things are off to a great start.

“I think it’s the future of health care in a lot of ways,” Garrett stressed. “And we’re happy to be leading the way.”

Ahead of schedule

Young has been serving as the point person for the program at Hackensack Meridian Health – and he noted that it is ahead of schedule — it was not expected to be treating 10 patients a day until later in the year.

“Probably by December, we are looking at 15 to 20 patients on a daily census – and that’s just incredible,” said Young. “Right now, about 65% of the individuals going to this program were coming from the emergency room – and they have all different levels of criteria that they have to meet in order to be discharged to the home. It’s really a great program.”

“What we were really moved by was just the nature of the commitment and depth of the commitment,” Medically Home CEO Rami Karjian told NJBIZ – recounting the long journey to launch this effort with Hackensack Meridian. “Starting with Bob and Patrick – and the direct influence that had on the success of the program in the earliest days. Candidly, we have not seen anything like it.”

Rakowski lauded the commitment by Hackensack Meridian Health’s leadership to innovation and social determinants of health.

“As it starts to work and you see the impact of that, it has an incredible effect – causing people to believe you could do bigger and better things for patients and still win financially,” said Rakowski. “This has been the most impressive launch in the history of our company. We’ve been around for a while. We’re really moved by the quality of the commitment.”

“This is better care for the patients – for those who are eligible,” said Karjian. “They have ramped up very quickly – given their commitment to provide the best care possible to patients in the community. Physicians and nurses who care for the patients prefer it. Patients prefer it – and they get better outcomes. And that’s what ultimately drive a win-win for everybody, including making health care more affordable.”

Future includes AI

Garrett also noted that the program has been rolled out initially to its three biggest and most complex care centers.

“If we get a good experience here, it will make the rollout even that much better and stronger as we go forward,” said Garrett. “We’re excited about it. It’s going to take some time to roll it out throughout our health network. But we’re committed to doing that. It’s a high priority for HMH.”

There are plans for AI-related efforts and deployments as the program rolls out.

“We have many scores now of AI-use pilots that are going on within the network,” said Garrett. “And I see this as a use-case pilot where we can help to identify the type of patients that are appropriate for this program. Our Data Transformation Team would be ready to go to work with Medically Home on that type of AI deployment – when we are ready. I think, based on all of the work that they’ve been doing in that space already – we’re uniquely qualified to move forward in that direction. That could be very exciting.”

Growth mode:

• HMH breaks ground on $40M Carrier Clinic expansion to serve younger patients
• Hackensack Meridian Health opens $30M facility in Paramus
• HMH plans first-of-its-kind health care facility

As for the long-term goals?

“The overall vision for a program like this is to be able to move to multiple use cases – move across the entire continuum of care and for Hackensack to consider that there are actually millions of hospital beds in the State of New Jersey that are an extension of the HMH system,” said Rakowski.

“The success of programs like this depends on early wins and early credibility handling complex patients first,” he continued. “But the goal is to not only expand this to many use cases within Hackensack, but we believe that Hackensack can become kind of the central command center for patients with other hospitals in the network and out of the network in the State of New Jersey – and even beyond. Because there is an enormous benefit of scale once you start to establish handling a lot of patients at the same time.”

“Ultimately, it’s to go to all of our 18 hospitals – to be across the entire network,” said Young. “And potentially support a number of other hospital systems in New Jersey.”

See also:

Virtua Health also offers a Hospital at Home program. Click here to read more.