The Metropolis of Jacksonville, Florida is addressing entry to take care of the uninsured (roughly 100,000 folks) via a digital service that’s connecting them to native suppliers. In its first three months of operation, this system, referred to as HealthlinkJAX, has saved taxpayers practically $1 million in potential ER visits. HealthlinkJAX is addressing a significant challenge for the group—as it’s a main challenge for communities across the nation: ED overcrowding. Many uninsured people see the emergency division as their solely dependable care supply useful resource. However the HealthlinkJAX program is working to information uninsured people to digital care suppliers, so as to each enhance their outcomes and relieve overburdened emergency departments.
Matthew Thompson, M.D., a board-certified emergency doctor who has been in scientific apply for 14 years, is the CEO and co-founder of the Jacksonville-based Telescope Well being, which describes itself on its web site as “a physician-led well being care options firm targeted on lowering obstacles to care via innovation, human connection, and know-how”; and it’s Telescope Well being that’s offering the scientific workforce behind HealthlinkJAX’s success. As the corporate notes, “Since 2018, our mission has been to enhance outcomes and supply unmatched value-based care options in partnership with well being care organizations. Dr. Rill and Dr. Thompson, each emergency physicians, based Telescope Well being after seeing numerous emergency division sufferers with out well timed entry to a major care doctor or care navigation companies. Over the previous a number of years, our passionate management workforce has grown to incorporate consultants with years of expertise in know-how, affected person expertise, supplier coaching, and value-based care.”
Dr. Thompson spoke not too long ago with Healthcare Innovation Editor-in-Chief Mark Hagland relating to the creation of Telescope Well being, the set of wants that the group is addressing in Jacksonville and elsewhere, and the chance to satisfy the wants of uninsured Individuals for care supply. Under are excerpts from that interview.
How would you describe Telescope Well being’s scope and vary of companies?
We’re a nationwide firm with contracts and shoppers all throughout the U.S. We actually are a value-based care, tech-enabled group. We’re delivering the identical suite of companies on the payer, employer, ACO [accountable care organization], sides. Delivering the identical companies.
We offer data-driven digital care. We’ve got our personal analytics software program. On the ACO aspect, we do preventive outreach for ACOs’ doctor teams, present 24/7 protection to avert ED visits, and do all of it in an invisible method. We don’t need to steal sufferers. We do it white-labeled below the ACO or doctor group, so as to not confuse sufferers.
Inform me in regards to the founding of the corporate?
We based the corporate in 2018; Telescope began as a service line for a still-existing ED staffing group, Emergency Sources Group. In 2018-2019, we established Telescope Well being as a separate entity. And Baptist Well being in Jacksonville, our first consumer, remains to be one in all our greatest shoppers. I’m an emergency doctor, and, as Emergency Sources Group, we started working with our companions to convey down ED and hospital admission charges. We began in a really totally different method from consumer-facing organizations. We’re constructed our infrastructure to obtain real-time referrals, and so forth. It’s a unique form of method. At our core, we’re a doctor group.
We’ve got our personal proprietary telemedicine software program, and so forth. We cowl their workers for digital care companies and navigation, and telehealth companies, and do focused transitional care follow-up for congestive coronary heart failure, amongst different scientific service strains. And we rapidly branched out to the employer aspect—Ameriflex, a advantages administrator with over 55,000 workers, and so we’re offering companies to their shoppers. For instance, they supply for the Consolidated Appropriations Act necessities [around pricing transparency]. Employers are being sued as a result of workers are spending an excessive amount of on healthcare. And Ameriflex helps brokers, employer directors, and others, to deal with these considerations. Lots of employers at the moment are changing into self-funded, and are in search of methods to scale back expenditures, and admittedly, pressing care telemedicine doesn’t assist handle the two p.c with excessive ranges of continual illness. So we’ll proactively outreach to these sufferers. And that’s value-based care. So we fill that hole, as a result of we are able to present the suppliers.
What’s your doctor corps like?
We’ve got a big pool that takes care of sufferers nationally. In truth, Blue Cross Blue Defend of Nebraska, with 400,000 members within the state, is one in all our shoppers. And we care for over 100,000 sufferers in Jacksonville. Per all that, we’ve a gaggle of a number of hundred physicians concerned with us; some are workers, some are on contract. It’s like an Uber-driver mannequin. We even have therapists and psychiatrists nationally additionally, in all 50 states.
As a result of we work with employers and well being plans, in all places from Alaska to New York to Florida, by state regulation, you may have to have the ability to deal with sufferers wherever they’re, together with in the event that they’re touring. In order that’s an ordinary, to have suppliers in all states, to supply telehealth.
Are you able to say what number of visits per yr you log altogether?
It’s within the tens of 1000’s of visits.
What have been the largest challenges in architecting this and making it work?
Offering an pressing care go to in telehealth and treating somebody’s runny nostril is the best aspect; and utilization typically is low. Probably the most difficult side is the workflows and the partnerships which might be concerned. However we’re the primary within the nation to develop a program absolutely funded by a municipality—on this case, the Metropolis of Jacksonville, via HealthLinkJAX, which gives digital take care of residents in Jacksonville. I’ve delivered a TEDTalk on the topic. And each municipality has a funds for EMS, phone service, and so forth. And the uninsured inhabitants usually makes use of the ED as their major care; however value-based care means addressing these wants early on. And in case you’re a Medicaid affected person, you’ll have incentives to get into value-based care. The uninsured inhabitants doesn’t have that.
So this program is fairly easy from a public well being perspective. Name 925-CARE in case you’re uninsured; a nursing workforce will deal with your want. When you want a physician, you’re instantly despatched a hyperlink, and also you’re seen by a physician. And in case you’re a diabetic, I’ll join you to care administration. In Jacksonville, we’ve seven safety-net clinics, two federally certified well being facilities, and 5 unbiased well being methods, some for-profit and a few non-profit. Jacksonville is a big medical hub. We’ve bought a ton of hospital beds and a smaller inhabitants right here in Jacksonville, together with a department of Mayo Clinic, in addition to UF Well being, Baptist Well being, and HCA Healthcare.
And on this program, as a result of we combine companies with well being methods, we’ve a real-time feed from well being methods in order that we are able to outreach to sufferers. The well being methods find it irresistible as a result of we’re liberating up ERs and beds. And I can instantly assist the affected person, together with via follow-up. We offer that transitional care service. It’s very complete from an information integration perspective, scientific workflow perspective, and offering complete care perspective. We’re in talks with ten municipalities. And we’re profitable as a result of we’re white-labeled. We’re distinctive.
As of final month, over 3,000 calls have gone via this program, and over 1,000 folks have used us as a substitute of the ED. In Duvall County, in case you’re uninsured, $4,800 is the common value of an ED go to. The common cost, you’ll get a invoice for $4,800, and that would have been averted.
How do you see the following few years in your firm?
We’ve got payer shoppers, medical insurance shoppers who need us to achieve their members; we’ve municipalities and we’ve self-funded employers, and well being methods. It doesn’t matter who involves us; it’s the info integration, the navigation outreach, and the care. For us, it’s closely on the engineering aspect, so we are able to sew all these items collectively. And if we are able to combine along with your knowledge, we are able to present focused companies and obtain monetary ROI. So we’ll replicate this in different giant cities, and we’ll see outcomes.
Is there the rest you’d like so as to add?
On the middle of all of this, it doesn’t work except you companion and collaborate. The place issues fail is when a single vendor or entity desires to regulate all the things. You may’t push out the stakeholders. We’re the glue within the center. Once you present 24/7 entry to a doctor, you could be the glue.