BOSTON, Aug. 2, 2022 – Ariadne Labs, in collaboration with CaroNova, a health innovation incubator for the Carolinas, recently concluded the first phase of the Home Hospital Early Adopters Accelerator to support health care systems to further develop their own home hospital programs. Through this 40-week program, a total of 91 representatives from 18 health systems in the U.S. and South Africa joined in an agile fused network to rapidly design 20 tools to support successful home hospital programs.
In November 2020, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services expanded their Hospital Without Walls initiative to include the Acute Hospital Care at Home Waiver. Since then, many hospitals and health systems across the United States have been working to expand their services to treat acutely ill patients in the home. Home hospital programs have been shown to have numerous benefits, including lower costs and readmission rates, yet successfully developing and launching these programs can be challenging.
With pro bono support from Scrum Inc., Accelerator participants used the Scrum agile project management framework to collaborate, design, and develop the tools needed to address the common needs and challenges early adopters face as they implement new home hospital programs. Tools developed include criteria for identifying which patients are eligible for home hospital services, workflows for admissions, IV medications, and escalation, and solutions for software, food services, and oxygen use, among others. The health systems involved in the accelerator will now apply these tools to their own efforts to create or expand their home hospital program.
The Accelerator was led by David Levine, MD, MPH, a practicing general internist and investigator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, associate faculty at Ariadne Labs, and an internationally recognized leader in home hospital. He is the head of Ariadne’s Home Hospital initiative, which seeks to generate and disseminate the evidence to deliver advanced care at home so that patients can stay at home no matter their health concerns.
“Studies have shown that home hospital care translates to less readmission, better experience, and improved physical activity for patients, not to mention capacity creation for strained hospitals,” said Levine. “With the tools that the Accelerator has developed over the last 40 weeks, I am excited to see these agile institutions deliver acute care at home with precision.”
“Through participation in the Accelerator, hospitals and health systems across the Carolinas are now better equipped to launch their home hospital programs,” said Jai Kumar, MPH, Senior Director of Program Design at CaroNova. “I look forward to seeing the incredible progress made in these 40 weeks translated into improved care for patients across our region.”
The hospitals and health systems participating in the Accelerator include:
- CaroMont Health
- Cape Fear Valley
- Carteret Health Care
- Discovery Health
- H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute
- Healing Hands Healthcare
- McLeod Health
- Medical University of South Carolina Health Charleston
- Novant Health
- Roper Saint Francis Healthcare
- Scotland Healthcare
- Sentara Healthcare
- The MetroHealth System
- UNC Health
- Vanderbilt University Medical Center
- Tidelands Waccamaw Community Hospital
- WakeMed Health and Hospitals
- Wentworth-Douglass Hospital
About Ariadne Labs:
Ariadne Labs is a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. With a mission to save lives and reduce suffering, our vision is that health systems equitably deliver the best possible care for every patient, everywhere, every time. We use human centered design, health systems implementation science, public health expertise, and frontline clinical care experience to design, test and spread scalable systems-level solutions to some of health care’s biggest problems. From developing checklists and conversation guides to fostering international collaborations and establishing global standards of measurement, our work has been accessed in more than 165 countries, touching hundreds of millions of lives.
Media Contact:
Brigid Tsai
Email: btsai@ariadnelabs.org
About CaroNova:
CaroNova is a bi-state team established through a partnership among The Duke Endowment, the North Carolina Healthcare Association, and the South Carolina Hospital Association. CaroNova engages with critical stakeholders to effect positive change in health across North and South Carolina. Acting as a connector of people and ideas for the two states, CaroNova addresses common areas of need by supporting promising new practices and developing business models to scale and sustain what works for systemic change. The name CaroNova translates to creating a new vision (Nova) of health for the Carolinas (Caro). Please visit CaroNova.org to learn more.
Media Contact:
Jill Armbruster
Email: jill@CaroNova.org