The 50-plus-hospital system rolled out acute hospital care at home in January from its AdventHealth Winter Park (Fla.) facility (patients have to come from the hospital). The initiative has since treated a handful of patients, with a goal of reaching an average daily census of 20 to 30 in the next year.
“AdventHealth did a lot of homework,” Maura Nazario, MSN, RN, vice president of clinical operations for AdventHealth’s home-based services, told Becker’s. “They understood from the Mayo Clinics of the world, the Mass General Brighams, what it takes to launch a program like this.”
Ms. Nazario herself worked for Mayo Clinic’s hospital-at-home program, which is also centered in Florida, before joining AdventHealth in mid-2024 to oversee its development of the care model.
With hospital at home, patients (after coming from the emergency department or continuing a hospital inpatient stay) get acute care at home upon being outfitted with a tablet, monitoring technology and medical equipment then receiving two visits a day from a nurse or paramedic and a daily virtual appointment with a physician. Nurses, located in a command center, are available virtually 24/7.
“For AdventHealth, we really pride ourselves on providing whole-person care,” Ms. Nazario said. “Whole-person care is thinking about the patient, not only their physical self but their mental, their social and their spiritual wellbeing. Providing a substitution for their inpatient hospitalizations from the comfort of their home exemplifies our philosophy and treating the patient as the driver of their care plan.”
AdventHealth partnered with remote monitoring company Biofourmis on the technology but otherwise built the program itself. Coordinating all the logistics was the biggest challenge, Ms. Nazario said.
AdventHealth, which also has hospitals in Colorado, Illinois and several other states, decided to unveil hospital at home in Florida because the health system has its largest presence in the central part of the state, which also has a large aging population, and because patients there are familiar with the care model. Florida has become a hub of hospital at home, with big health systems like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic also largely focusing their programs on the state.
But AdventHealth hopes to expand to more states, as well as diagnoses and levels of care (such as skilled nursing). Initially, the program has freed up inpatient space at Winter Park hospital, and patient (and caregiver) feedback has been positive, Ms. Nazario said.
“We feel it makes us better clinicians,” she said. “When we provide this level of care, it makes us learn more about what’s really happening when patients go home. Are their diets too hard to follow? Do they have too many medications?”