Prisma Health takes care into the home

Prisma Health is taking key elements of inpatient care into patients’ homes to help them stay out of the hospital under a new program for the Midlands called Home Recovery Care. 

The model has been used at Prisma Health hospitals in the Upstate, according to a news release.  

For patients under care through Prisma Health Richland Hospital, the organization partners with Nashville, Tenn.-based Contessa to deliver the service at its third site, the news release said. 

The program launched at Greenville Memorial Hospital in 2019 and expanded to Oconee Memorial Hospital last year. In the Upstate, the program has a 90% acceptance rate and an average patient satisfaction score of 98%, according to the release.  

Prisma Health was one of the first health systems approved to provide Home Recovery Care to Medicare fee-for-service patients under the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Hospitals Without Walls waiver, the release said. Programs that encourage hospitals to find healthy ways to stay out of emergency rooms and hospital rooms have been part of Medicare/Medicaid rules for years, with the COVID-19 pandemic spurring more efforts.  

“Prisma Health has had great success with the program in the Upstate, and we are thrilled to provide this level of home care to more South Carolinians by adding it at Richland,” Bo Cofield, Prisma Health Richland Hospital CEO, said in the release. “The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced that going beyond the walls of the traditional hospital setting often gives our patients a better option for acute-level health care. Home Recovery Care was in place before the pandemic, but it is now gaining momentum. We believe this kind of service is essential to the care of our patients and is an important component of health care.” 

Home recovery is more satisfying for patients and costs less than traditional recovery in a hospital, according to the release. 

The care is for patients with acute, non-life-threatening medical conditions. 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, according to the release. 

The program includes 24-hour access to a recovery care coordinator and continual monitoring for up to 30 days, the release said. The in-home work is done by Prisma Health’s home-health registered nurses and by physician consultation utilizing telehealth. 

“Since we launched the program, we have served 300 patients and saved patients from being hospitalized for 1,000 additional inpatient days,” Angela Orsky, vice president of post-acute services at Prisma Health, said in the release. “Our patient likelihood to recommend scores are 100, and we are exceeding all our quality targets. Our home health clinicians in partnership with our hospitalists have exceled in the ability to care for complex patients safely in their homes.”