Our experience with Philips as a telehealth partner really has been fantastic. We really felt it was very important to partner with a company that has the resources to continue to develop with us as we try to develop our models. My name is Laurie Neander, and I am the CEO of At Home Care, which is located in Oneonta, New York near Cooperstown, where we are part of the Bassett Healthcare Network, which is based in Cooperstown, New York, and we are a Medicare certified home health agency. We have an average daily census of approximately 800 patients that are spread across five predominantly rural counties, so they’re very difficult often to reach, especially with weather conditions that we experience over the course of the year.
The goals that we have been able to realize with our telehealth program are not substantiated with any sort of clinical study, but what I will say is that we have definitely observed reduced rehospitalization for individuals served by telehealth. As an example, an elderly man, heart failure, had been in and out of the hospital, the frequent flier that we hear about, and when we put telehealth in his home, rather than being placed in a skilled facility, which he was headed toward, he was able to remain in his home for about a year and a half, as an example, with only one or two hospitalizations, which were totally unrelated to his diagnosis of heart failure. What we know is that our patients are happier, they’re very satisfied, they feel connected, that they feel that they have that reassurance from our nurses and the regular connection with those individuals who need that added support and education, and just a sense of being followed when they have just left an acute hospital situation. I would say the greatest success and what we are most proud of are the ability to keep often very old individuals at home in their own environment utilizing telehealth.