The Metropolis of Jacksonville, Florida is addressing entry to take care of the uninsured (roughly 100,000 individuals) by means of 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 almost $1 million in potential ER visits. HealthlinkJAX is addressing a significant challenge for the neighborhood—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, with a view to each enhance their outcomes and relieve overburdened emergency departments.
Matthew Thompson, M.D., a board-certified emergency doctor who has been in scientific follow 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 by means of 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 providers. Over the previous a number of years, our passionate management crew has grown to incorporate specialists with years of expertise in know-how, affected person expertise, supplier coaching, and value-based care.”
Dr. Thompson spoke just lately 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. Beneath are excerpts from that interview.
How would you describe Telescope Well being’s scope and vary of providers?
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 providers on the payer, employer, ACO [accountable care organization], sides. Delivering the identical providers.
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 manner. We don’t wish to steal sufferers. We do it white-labeled below the ACO or doctor group, so as to not confuse sufferers.
Inform me concerning 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, continues to be one in every of 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 completely different manner from consumer-facing organizations. We’re constructed our infrastructure to obtain real-time referrals, and so on. It’s a distinct sort of strategy. At our core, we’re a doctor group.
We’ve got our personal proprietary telemedicine software program, and so on. We cowl their staff for digital care providers and navigation, and telehealth providers, 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 staff, and so we’re offering providers to their shoppers. For instance, they supply for the Consolidated Appropriations Act necessities [around pricing transparency]. Employers are being sued as a result of staff are spending an excessive amount of on healthcare. And Ameriflex helps brokers, employer directors, and others, to handle these issues. Quite a lot of employers are actually turning into self-funded, and are searching for methods to cut back expenditures, and admittedly, pressing care telemedicine doesn’t assist handle the two % with excessive ranges of persistent illness. So we are going to proactively outreach to these sufferers. And that’s value-based care. So we fill that hole, as a result of we will present the suppliers.
What’s your doctor corps like?
We’ve got a big pool that takes care of sufferers nationally. In reality, Blue Cross Blue Defend of Nebraska, with 400,000 members within the state, is one in every of our shoppers. And we deal with over 100,000 sufferers in Jacksonville. Per all that, we now have a bunch of a number of hundred physicians concerned with us; some are staff, 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 every single place from Alaska to New York to Florida, by state legislation, you’ve 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 12 months you log altogether?
It’s within the tens of hundreds of visits.
What have been the most important 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 facet is the workflows and the partnerships which are 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, by means of 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 on. 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 crew will handle your want. If you happen to want a health care provider, you’re instantly despatched a hyperlink, and also you’re seen by a health care provider. And in case you’re a diabetic, I’ll join you to care administration. In Jacksonville, we now have 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 providers with well being methods, we now have a real-time feed from well being methods in order that we will outreach to sufferers. The well being methods like it as a result of we’re releasing up ERs and beds. And I can instantly assist the affected person, together with by means of follow-up. We offer that transitional care service. It’s very complete from a knowledge 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 by means of this program, and over 1,000 individuals have used us as a substitute of the ED. In Duvall County, in case you’re uninsured, $4,800 is the typical price of an ED go to. The typical cost, you’ll get a invoice for $4,800, and that might have been averted.
How do you see the subsequent few years on your firm?
We’ve got payer shoppers, medical insurance shoppers who need us to succeed in their members; we now have municipalities and we now have 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 will sew all these items collectively. And if we will combine together with your knowledge, we will present focused providers and obtain monetary ROI. So we’ll replicate this in different massive cities, and we’ll see outcomes.
Is there anything you’d like so as to add?
On the heart of all of this, it doesn’t work until you companion and collaborate. The place issues fail is when a single vendor or entity needs to manage all the pieces. You possibly can’t push out the stakeholders. We’re the glue within the center. Whenever you present 24/7 entry to a doctor, you might be the glue.
