Prisma Health, Contessa to put hospital-level care into patients’ homes

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Prisma Health will partner with Nashville-based Contessa on a care model, called home recovery care, designed to keep patients out of the hospital by bringing key elements of inpatient care directly into patients’ homes.

Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital will be the first hospital in South Carolina to offer home recovery care when it rolls out in early 2020, according to a news release. Prisma Health Oconee Memorial Hospital and Prisma Health Baptist Easley Hospital will be the next ones to offer the program. The long-term goal is to offer it to eligible patients at any Prisma Health hospital in the state.

Prisma Health is the largest not-for-profit health organization in South Carolina.

Home recovery care provides hospital-level care to patients with acute, non-life-threatening medical conditions in the comfort of their own homes, according to the news release. Roughly 150 diagnoses are considered eligible for the service and range from congestive heart failure and pneumonia to dehydration, cellulitis and urinary tract infections. Patients must be evaluated by a Prisma Health doctor to determine if their conditions can be safely treated in the home instead of a standard hospital environment, the release said.

Benefits for patients participating in home recovery care include reduction in stress, higher satisfaction, quicker recovery times, 24-hour access to a recovery care coordinator and continual monitoring for 30 days. Home Recovery Care allows health care systems to provide a better patient experience, reduce demand for inpatient hospital use, reduce the cost of care and advance efforts to provide the right care in the right place – which is increasingly outside the hospital, according to the release.

“We partnered with national leader Contessa on this project because we want to go beyond the walls of the traditional hospital setting in order to give our patients a better option for acute-level health care,” Angelo Sinopoli, MD, executive vice president and chief clinical officer at Prisma Health, said in the release. “By redesigning the acute care model, we’ve found a way to bring all the essential elements of inpatient treatment for numerous conditions into the comfort and convenience of patients’ own homes. We believe this kind of out-of-the-hospital thinking is the future of health care.”

Much of the routine daily aspects found in acute-care settings will be the same in this home setting, including medication management, IV therapy and ongoing monitoring of vital signs and blood samples. The in-home work will be done by Prisma Health’s home-health registered nurses and by physician consultation utilizing telehealth.

“Care models are changing, but what can never change is the need to provide our patients with high-quality care,” Sinopoli said in the release.

“In markets similar to Prisma Health across the country, we’ve already seen how introducing Home Recovery Care can lead to major improvements in patient satisfaction, outcomes and cost of care, Travis Messina, CEO of Contessa, said in the release. “We look forward to achieving those same results across South Carolina.”

Contessa facilitates hospital-level care for patients in the home by providing three key elements: the clinical model that enables safe delivery of hospital-level care in the home; the administrative capabilities to make care reimbursable by health plans; and Care Convergence, a proprietary technology platform that supports the clinical and administrative functions.

Eligible patients using Contessa’s home recovery care model at other health systems have accepted the option at a 90 percent rate, the news release said. The care model has continuous patient monitoring throughout the 30 days, which has resulted in a 44 percent reduction in readmission rates as compared to hospital care delivered in the traditional acute facility.

“For eligible patients, it will be a wonderful in-home option that can help reduce stress and anxieties for both patients and their families,” Angela Orsky, vice president of post-acute services at Prisma Health, said in the release. “We look forward to bringing this program to the Upstate — and eventually the entire state — as part of our purpose to achieve a better state of health for South Carolina.”

Prisma Health is South Carolina’s largest private employer. The organization formed in late 2017 when Greenville Health System and Palmetto Health joined together, officially becoming Prisma Health in January 2019.