To help slow the spread of COVID-19, Hillcrest Home Care, one of Nebraska’s largest skilled home health and telehealth agencies, will immediately begin real-time screening, remote monitoring and risk assessment of COVID-19 symptoms for employees and at-home patients using Medocity’s Digital Care Platform.
Medocity, a leader in enterprise virtual care technology, today launched its COVID-19 screening and remote monitoring solution for Hillcrest Home Care, part of Nebraska’s largest post-acute health services provider. Built upon Medocity’s flagship Digital Care Platform, the population-based COVID-19 program enables virtual screening, remote symptom monitoring, vital signs tracking, and proactive interventions personalized for any population, including high risk patients with multiple comorbidities.
“We recognized that during this health care crisis, we needed to quickly provide for the safety and well-being of both team members and clients in order to continue personalized skilled medical care in the home,” said Lauren Wright, Administrator of Hillcrest Home Care. “Coronavirus puts many of our home health clients, particularly those with complex conditions such as COPD and CHF, at far greater risk than before. We can now remotely monitor and track changes to temperature, oxygen levels, and other COVID-19 specific symptoms every day. This allows us to quickly identify those requiring additional healthcare attention, so that we can provide the right service at the right time. This customized service is a game changer to supplement our in-home nursing and therapy visits, and it also provides us with a HIPAA-compliant telemedicine platform for virtual visits as needed.”
In response to the expanding global threat, Medocity accelerated development of a targeted digital program with COVID-19 specific clinical protocols to:
- Aid in the early identification of possible COVID-19 cases in a population
- Proactively push frequent, consistent, relevant communications and guidance personalized to each user
- Allow for real-time active monitoring of individuals and reported symptoms
- Facilitate timely escalation of care as changes in health status are noted
- Track and report evolving COVID-19 population health statistics and trends over time to ensure resources are appropriately deployed
“The Medocity platform’s data and reporting capability allow for a systematic view of users’ COVID-19 symptoms and status in real-time and by location. There have been examples from around the globe where this type of systematic monitoring and targeted response is proving to be a key component in the fight to stop the spread of the disease,” said Robert Epstein, MD, epidemiologist, CEO of Epstein Health and member of Medocity’s Medical Advisory Board. “As hospitals and doctors-offices become inaccessible, we now see that we have to move away from reliance on in-person patient visits and use digital solutions to shift to remote, cost-effective, large-scale population surveillance and targeted intervention that would otherwise be impossible to do.”
Hillcrest Home Care clinical team members will use their own mobile devices to provide daily self-reported symptom checks to ensure they are healthy and able to report to work. Separately, low-risk at-home patients can use their own mobile devices to perform the same self-assessments. For high-risk COPD and CHF patients, Hillcrest will utilize its existing remote monitoring program with pre-configured tablets and devices supplied by Medocity. Any reported patient-vitals such as temperature, heart rate, or oxygen levels (pulse ox) that are outside pre-determined parameters will trigger real-time clinician alerts and appropriate, proactive COVID-19 interventions.
“Our remote patient monitoring capabilities can be used for chronic and complex condition management, including comorbidities, or for crisis management as we are demonstrating with our COVID-19 digital solution,” said Raj Agarwal, President, and CEO of Medocity. “Backed by recent FDA encouragement, Hillcrest Home Care providers now have visibility to patient’s at-home health status which may reduce the need for in-person visits and decrease the risk of coronavirus exposure. During this uncertain time, Medocity’s highly configurable, cloud-based digital platform allows any sponsor – including health care providers, payers, clinical researchers or public health agencies – to easily and quickly go virtual.
About Medocity
Medocity is the leading healthcare technology company transforming the management of chronic or complex disease. The Medocity Digital Care Platform is the next generation in early and proactive intervention, enabling our clients to deliver comprehensive virtual care programs for patients with any condition, anywhere in the world. The company’s award-winning HIPAA compliant solution connects all stakeholders in care, continuously monitors patient-reported data from hundreds of sources, and applies artificial intelligence to identify anomalies, send out alerts, and intervene when necessary — all in real-time, through one common ecosystem. Clinically proven across multiple chronic conditions and settings, the Medocity Platform increases engagement, improves outcomes and lowers total healthcare costs.
About Hillcrest Home Care
Hillcrest Home Care offers skilled medical home health and telehealth services to aging adults in 11 counties in Nebraska and Iowa. The agency is part of Hillcrest Health Services, which offers the widest array of senior health care and housing services in the region, including independent and assisted living, memory support, post-acute rehabilitation, long-term care, adult day services, outpatient therapy, home health, hospice and in-home personal care. Hillcrest’s 1,600+ team members enhance the lives of more than 1,500 aging adults every day.
