Articles

Winter 2022 - Message from Your Regent

Message From Your ACHE Regent
Winter 2022


Hospital. @Home. No doubt these two words have become entrenched in your daily discussions. With technological advances and a widening acceptance and uptake of these in application, it is only logical that we pursue such an approach to fulfill our patient centric missions.

Like many of you, it is an area I have been involved in operationalizing. It has become an effective option for providing inpatient care for certain patients, as it affords the patient with receiving the acute care they need in the comfort of their technology-converted home.

It is not a new concept; certainly it has been contemplated for years. However, with the recent dramatic adoption rate of video communication, secure data transfer protocols and other supporting technologies, even some of the staunchest who have pumped the brakes on such an idea in the past now support this approach. What does it mean for the traditional hosteled patients in our acute care organizations? There is utility for both. After all, higher acuity patients will continue to require the care only available with localization of professionals, equipment, and environment.

We know that patients, as any customer, want easy, simple, competent interactions with their healthcare team. In that regard, there is little difference from other services they seek. If there is a button (or just a few clicks) they can pursue to access services or care providers, they will. And we have been increasingly seeing this in the ambulatory setting. It may be a shift in viewpoint for many. This may be the case as healthcare may oft be seen as such a large behemoth that is slow to change when it comes to workflows that suit the organizational efficiency versus those that suit the desires of patients for whom we exist. I believe with our leadership, this continues to improve.

At the same time, this presents a huge opportunity for us. It gives us yet another way to connect with the communities we serve. It gives us a way to build better ties with both our current and future patients. It is my experience that I most often see healthcare organizations build work systems around current patients, but little around future patients. Beyond a relatively general marketing campaign, there are few examples of connected approaches to meet the evolving patient desires for how they receive care. Offering acute care in the patient’s home, when clinically appropriate, is a changed mindset from, “this is it, this is where we provide care, come to us” to “we recognize the desire you have for in-home care, and we are rising to that”. We not only can improve patient satisfaction, but can also generate engagement and loyalty. If deployed well, we can steer patients toward other health services and products that the patient may need over time. It also allows us the opportunity to build the relationship needed with our patients to proactively nudge them toward their health needs (that perhaps they are not good at) and assist them with reminders by connecting them to other patient supporting platforms and connecting services we offer. So in the end, it can be a win-win.

In all things ACHE, I remain your humble servant,



Trent A. Beach, PharmD, FACHE
Regent for Tennessee
[email protected]