Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network has ramped up its home care program to streamline communication and improve health services, saving millions of dollars in the process.
Since Allegheny Health Network launched its Healthcare@Home program last year, the network has saved approximately $5 million through reduced hospital readmission rates within one month of discharge, Bill Gammie, president of home health, hospice and palliative care at AHN, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Readmissions among AHN's home care patients fell from 19 percent to 14 percent since the program's initiation.
As Medicare escalates penalties against hospitals for patient readmission rates, communication between hospitals and post-acute care providers has become crucial to finances. In 2015, Medicare penalized hospitals a total of $428 million, or three percent of their total reimbursement, for readmissions within a month of patient discharge. The total figure is up from $227 million in penalties from 2014.
AHN bolstered its Healthcare@Home program through a series of strategic partnerships with home care providers over the past several years. Those partnerships include agreements with Celtic Healthcare, a home health and hospice provider, UPMC Home Nursing Agency and John Hopkins Home Care Group. AHN also acquired Erie, Pa.-based St. Vincent Health System in 2012 to gain the capability to administer medications intravenously at home.
"This kind of stuff — it's cutting edge," Brian Holzer, a physician who oversees AHN's Healthcare@Home program as senior vice president of diversified business, told the Post-Gazette.
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