The partnership between Best Buy Health and Mass General Brigham heralds a transformative era in at-home healthcare. Mass General Brigham’s established Home Hospital, combined with Best Buy Health’s innovative solutions, aims to expand hospital-at-home services. This collaboration harnesses technology to enhance patient care, emphasizing the shared vision of a future centered on home-based healthcare. As healthcare systems embrace this paradigm shift, the partnership’s goals include scaling existing programs, fostering patient-clinician connectivity, and revolutionizing care delivery beyond traditional hospital settings.
The burgeoning trend of hospital-at-home models prompts healthcare systems to seek technological alliances for sustainable growth. The collaboration between Mass General Brigham and Best Buy Health signifies a pivotal leap toward advancing at-home healthcare services. With Mass General Brigham’s established expertise in Home Hospital initiatives and Best Buy Health’s cutting-edge solutions, this partnership aims to revolutionize patient care paradigms. By focusing on technology integration and a shared commitment to home-based healthcare, the collaboration seeks to expand services, improve patient-clinician connections, and redefine healthcare delivery beyond hospital walls.
Mass Brigham General has a well-established foothold in the hospital-at-home sector, notably launching the MGB Home Hospital in 2022, a consolidation of Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s initiatives dating back to 2017. This innovative venture offers a comprehensive array of services, including in-person and virtual visits, 24/7 access to care teams via phone and video, remote vital signs monitoring, medication administration, diagnostic testing, therapy sessions, social work assistance, and even food delivery, catering to a spectrum of clinical conditions from asthma to acute hepatitis.
Stephen Dorner, MD, the chief clinical and innovation officer for Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home, emphasized the rewarding patient-clinician relationship fostered in the home-based environment. The institution also operates New England’s largest Medicare-certified home health business, dedicated to supporting homebound patients during illnesses or injuries.
The strategic partnership between Mass General Brigham and Best Buy Health signifies a concerted effort to bolster the existing at-home healthcare initiatives, primarily by implementing the Current Health platform and customizing solutions to further scale the Home Hospital and associated services.
Notably, the expansion plans for the Home Hospital encompass three community hospital sites in Massachusetts—Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and Salem Hospital—envisaging a significant increase in the average daily patient count. The overarching ambition aims to transition approximately 10 percent of inpatient care across their five hospitals to patients’ homes within the next five years.
Identifying Best Buy’s Current Health platform as a seamless solution to enhance connectivity between patients and clinicians, Dorner underscored the shared vision of both entities, emphasizing their belief in the pivotal role of home-based healthcare in shaping the future of medical care.
The collaborative efforts entail not only the deployment of Current Health but also the utilization of Lively Mobile Plus, Best Buy’s emergency response system (PERS), designed to detect falls and swiftly connect patients with urgent response teams. Moreover, Best Buy Health is actively developing tailored systems and capabilities to augment the patient experience within Mass General Brigham’s Healthcare at Home portfolio.
Research substantiates the advantages of hospital-at-home models, indicating comparable mortality rates, significantly reduced readmission risks, and lower long-term care facility admission probabilities compared to traditional in-hospital care. Beyond patient benefits, clinicians report higher satisfaction levels while delivering care in patients’ familiar environments, potentially serving as a means to mitigate burnout and retain healthcare professionals.
However, despite the evident benefits, obstacles to widespread adoption persist. The novelty of the home hospitalization model, coupled with the need for educational campaigns and policy advocacy at the state and federal levels, stands as a primary challenge. The recent endorsement by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) through the Acute Hospital Care at Home initiative has spurred momentum, with hundreds of hospitals across multiple states now approved to offer acute-level care at home for beneficiaries.
Ultimately, the collaboration between Mass General Brigham and Best Buy Health stands as a beacon for the future of healthcare. Their concerted efforts to scale at-home healthcare services reflect a transformative approach, leveraging technology and shared visions. The partnership seeks to amplify patient care, fortify clinician-patient connectivity, and reimagine healthcare beyond traditional hospital settings. As this collaboration paves the way for innovative advancements in at-home healthcare, it underscores the potential for technology-driven solutions to revolutionize patient experiences and improve healthcare delivery for generations to come.
