Why aren’t personal emergency response systems (PERS) used more often for nonemergency purposes, like care coordination and readmission prevention?
That’s a question Aaron Kirk, president of Healthcom, a 25-year-old company based in Sullivan, Illinois, has pondered often. “The changes that we’re seeing right now” in the way healthcare is paid for “is really ideal for the medical-alert industry,” Kirk said.
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To this end, Healthcom on Monday announced a deal with Turenne PharMedCo, a medical supplier to long-term care industry in the Southeast, to provide wearable devices linking patients recently discharged from the hospital with their caregivers.
As part of a new initiative called CareLink Connect, Healthcom will provide its CareLink medical-alert technology to patients transitioning between hospitals or nursing homes and their own homes. PharMedCo, based in Montgomery, Alabama, will offer the service to home health and nursing facilities.
Patients wear a cellular-enabled pendant with a PERS-style button that instantly connects them to the Healthcom call center. “We then connect them with their nurse directly,” Kirk said. “We facilitate the care coordination.”
By triaging each call, Healthcom also can connect patients with caregivers or, if necessary, summon emergency help in the form of an ambulance or even a neighbor. “Seventy-four to 75 percent of the time during a medical emergency, we can get help to them fast enough to avoid a hospital admission,” Kirk said, citing company data.
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(Healthcom does offer models with automatic fall detection, a point that a certain skeptical MedCity News reporter absolutely had to ask about.)
Kirk also said that falls are more likely to happen in the first two weeks after hospital discharge or a switch to new medications than later on, so it’s important to intervene as part of the discharge planning process. He said that CareLink Connect is a direct response to recent Medicare policy changes that promote readmission prevention and discharge planning.
The program is designed for “progressive” home health agencies looking to be more proactive with their efforts to reduce hospital admissions, according to Kirk.
The partnership with PharMedCo allows a regional player like Healthcom to expand its reach. “It gives us access to a market we wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” Kirk said.
Photo: Healthcom
