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A Covid-19 Lesson: Some Seriously Ill Patients Can Be Treated at Home To ease pressure on hospitals, Northwell Health brought medical workers, oxygen tanks and intravenous equipment into patients’ homes.
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...So-called wraparound home care services were created, on the fly, by Northwell Health to deal with the surge in coronavirus cases that New York experienced this spring. Now this model may help relieve health systems in the Sun Belt and other parts of the United States, where rising numbers of cases are putting extraordinary pressure on hospitals, filling intensive care units and sending providers scrambling to hire extra nurses and secure medical supplies.
Northwell doctors are already discussing the program with physicians in Miami, where several hospitals have reached capacity. Florida has more than 300,000 Covid-19 cases, and more than 10,000 new cases were identified on Thursday.
The concept of hospital-at-home programs is not new, but they had been used primarily to treat patients with flare-ups of chronic conditions like heart failure.
In response to the coronavirus epidemic, Medicare relaxed the requirements for such care. Now patients are considered homebound if a medical practitioner advises them not to leave the home because of a diagnosis of confirmed or suspected Covid-19 or a condition that makes them more susceptible to contracting the virus.
In those situations, if a doctor says skilled services are needed, a home health agency can provide them under the Medicare Home Health benefit, officials said.
Since the start of the pandemic, some hospitals have switched to at-home services to open up hospital beds for Covid-19 patients or to provide follow-up care after Covid-19 patients are discharged from the hospital.
Northwell’s outreach is different because it focuses on acutely ill Covid-19 patients in the community. A team of Northwell specialists uses telehealth to advise doctors and patients in the community with mild or moderate illness.
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