Blessing Health System Partners with Biofourmis to Launch Home Hospital Services
Leader in virtual care and remote patient management solutions will enable integrated health system serving three states to participate in rural hospital research study and CMS Acute Hospital Care at Home Program
Biofourmis, a Boston-based virtual care and digital therapeutics provider announced that it was selected by Blessing Health System in Quincy, Illinois, as the technology solutions partner for its newest program, which delivers acute-level hospital care inside patients’ homes.
Blessing Health System is an integrated rural health system spread over three states (Illinois, Missouri and Iowa) consisting of three hospitals, two physician groups, an accredited college of nursing and health sciences, a network of medical specialty businesses and a charitable foundation.
Biofourmis is supporting the health system with its turnkey, end-to-end, home hospital solution for participation in the Rural Home Hospital project. This new program allows caregivers to deliver hospital-level care in patients’ homes across a range of acute conditions instead of admitting them to a medical facility. This allows them to optimize capacity and ensure that hospital beds are available for more critically ill patients. Other outcomes include higher patient satisfaction, lower readmission rates and hospital-acquired conditions, as well as a reduction in the overall cost of care. For rural communities, home hospital programs also reduce patient and family travel burdens and out-of-pocket costs associated with facility-based care.
Blessing Health System providers will visit patients in their homes and utilize Biofourmis technology to remotely monitor them using biosensors and a patient-centric companion app. Continuously streaming data from the wearables and electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) are fed into the Biofourmis artificial-intelligence (AI)-powered Biovitals® Analytics Engine, which establishes a personalized patient baseline via machine learning and delivers real-time notifications to providers as patient conditions change.
“Participating in a home-based hospital program in our rural area required choosing an experienced and knowledgeable technology partner offering a comprehensive solution that we could easily expand as the initiatives added more patients and more conditions,” said Mary Frances Barthel, MD, MHCM, SFHM, FACP, Chief Quality and Safety Officer, Blessing Health System. “Although we considered several solutions, Biofourmis offered the most comprehensive, highly scalable and user-friendly solution. We are confident that it will enable us to successfully participate in this program, but more importantly, deliver the high-quality care that our patients expect in the comfort and convenience of their homes.”
Biofourmis has deep experience as a technology provider for hospital-level care at home, including the Home Hospital program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which co-developed Biofourmis’ Hospital@Home technology solution. Brigham’s clinical leadership has published several clinical studies demonstrating the benefits of its program, including a randomized clinical trial in the Annals of Internal Medicine that found the Home Hospital program reduced hospital admissions among participating patients by 70% and lowered costs by 40%.
