Telehealth advocates often argue that home-based telemonitoring services will help the nation's growing ranks of accountable care organizations improve care coordination and reduce medical emergencies. One such ACO in Florida is now putting that argument to the test.
Primary Partners, a Florida-based organization of some 60 healthcare providers that participates in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Medicare Shared Savings Program, has announced a partnership with AMC Health, a New York-based provider of telemedicine services. The agreement enables AMC to provide telemonitoring services for Primary Partners patients with chronic diseases, such as heart failure, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
"As one of the oldest ACOs in the country, we have developed long-term relationships with many of our patients and we work together as partners," said Cara Jakob, MD, one of the organization's founding physician and its clinical integration director and chairman of the board, in a press release. "We selected AMC Health because their telehealth solutions are patient-centered and scalable. This gives us the ability to tailor care management programs that best meet the individual needs of our high-risk patients who benefit from this extra level of monitoring.”
“As physicians we are on the front line with our patients," she added. "Our partnership with AMC Health ensures that we will be notified whenever ongoing monitoring and case management services indicate that we need to see our patients between planned visits. It’s this continuum of care that we believe will significantly reduce utilization, particularly preventable 30-day readmissions.”
Telemedicine companies like AMC have long argued that home-based monitoring systems help physicians keep track of their patients on a more regular basis and enable them to spot problems before they become acute. The service is especially helpful to those with chronic conditions who require daily monitoring and adjustment, as well as patients released from the hospital.
“By identifying gaps in care and providing services and tools that support seamless and effective transitions of care, AMC Health will make it easier for our doctors to deliver high-quality, cost-effective and efficient evidence-based care,” said Jaime Gonzales, MD, another founding physician and board member, in the release. “This will position us to successfully navigate the impending shift to an outcomes-based reimbursement system.”
AMC Health has seen success in a number of partnerships over the past few years. In February 2012, the company reported a 44 percent reduction in all-cause 30-day readmissions and better efficiency in monitoring patients transitions from the hospital to the home in a study conducted with the Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health Plan. More recently, AMC Health announced a deal with Crystal Run Healthcare, a 300-provider multi-specialty group in New York, as well as a deal to provide telemonitoring services in a clinical trial conducted by Transparency Life Sciences and cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“We are pleased Primary Partners selected us to support its powerful and innovative patient-centered, shared-risk approach to care,” said Nesim Bildirici, AMC Health's president and CEO, in the Primary Partners release. “By harnessing the power of our telehealth offerings, Primary Partners will gain access to real-time, clinically actionable data that will allow them to detect and prevent avoidable problems that people with chronic conditions often suffer due to lack of coordination, follow up and communication when they transition from one care setting to another.”
