The Metropolis of Jacksonville, Florida is addressing entry to take care of the uninsured (roughly 100,000 individuals) by way of a digital service that’s connecting them to native suppliers. In its first three months of operation, this system, known as HealthlinkJAX, has saved taxpayers almost $1 million in potential ER visits. HealthlinkJAX is addressing a significant problem for the neighborhood—as it’s a main problem 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, as a way to each enhance their outcomes and relieve overburdened emergency departments.
Matthew Thompson, M.D., a board-certified emergency doctor who has been in medical apply 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 decreasing obstacles to care by way of innovation, human connection, and know-how”; and it’s Telescope Well being that’s offering the medical 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 main care doctor or care navigation providers. Over the previous a number of years, our passionate management workforce has grown to incorporate consultants 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 concerning the creation of Telescope Well being, the set of wants that the group is addressing in Jacksonville and elsewhere, and the chance to fulfill 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 have now our personal analytics software program. On the ACO facet, we do preventive outreach for ACOs’ doctor teams, present 24/7 protection to avert ED visits, and do all of it in an invisible method. We don’t need 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 Assets 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 all our greatest shoppers. I’m an emergency doctor, and, as Emergency Assets Group, we started working with our companions to carry down ED and hospital admission charges. We began in a really totally different method from consumer-facing organizations. We’re constructed our infrastructure to obtain real-time referrals, and many others. It’s a unique sort of strategy. At our core, we’re a doctor group.
We have now our personal proprietary telemedicine software program, and many others. We cowl their workers for digital care providers and navigation, and telehealth providers, and do focused transitional care follow-up for congestive coronary heart failure, amongst different medical service strains. And we shortly branched out to the employer facet—Ameriflex, a advantages administrator with over 55,000 workers, 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 workers are spending an excessive amount of on healthcare. And Ameriflex helps brokers, employer directors, and others, to handle these considerations. Plenty of employers are actually changing into self-funded, and are in search of methods to scale back expenditures, and albeit, pressing care telemedicine doesn’t assist handle the two p.c with excessive ranges of persistent illness. So we’ll proactively outreach to these sufferers. And that’s value-based care. So we fill that hole, as a result of we are able to present the suppliers.
What’s your doctor corps like?
We have now a big pool that takes care of sufferers nationally. The truth is, Blue Cross Blue Protect of Nebraska, with 400,000 members within the state, is one in all our shoppers. And we deal with over 100,000 sufferers in Jacksonville. Per all that, we’ve got a bunch of a number of hundred physicians concerned with us; some are workers, 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 gotten to have the ability to deal with sufferers wherever they’re, together with in the event that they’re touring. In order that’s a typical, to have suppliers in all states, to offer 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 largest challenges in architecting this and making it work?
Offering an pressing care go to in telehealth and treating somebody’s runny nostril is the simplest aspect; and utilization generally is low. Probably the most difficult facet is the workflows and the partnerships which might be 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 way of HealthLinkJAX, which gives digital take care of residents in Jacksonville. I’ve delivered a TEDTalk on the topic. And each municipality has a finances for EMS, phone service, and many others. And the uninsured inhabitants typically makes use of the ED as their main care; however value-based care means addressing these wants early on. And when 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 when you’re uninsured; a nursing workforce will deal with your want. Should you want a physician, you’re instantly despatched a hyperlink, and also you’re seen by a physician. And when you’re a diabetic, I’ll join you to care administration. In Jacksonville, we’ve got 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 large medical hub. We’ve received 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’ve got a real-time feed from well being methods in order that we are able to outreach to sufferers. The well being methods adore it as a result of we’re liberating up ERs and beds. And I can instantly assist the affected person, together with by way of follow-up. We offer that transitional care service. It’s very complete from an information integration perspective, medical 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 way of this program, and over 1,000 individuals have used us as a substitute of the ED. In Duvall County, when you’re uninsured, $4,800 is the typical value 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 following few years on your firm?
We have now payer shoppers, medical health insurance shoppers who need us to achieve their members; we’ve got municipalities and we’ve got self-funded employers, and well being methods. It doesn’t matter who involves us; it’s the information integration, the navigation outreach, and the care. For us, it’s closely on the engineering facet, so we are able to sew all these items collectively. And if we are able to combine together with your knowledge, we are able to 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 middle of all of this, it doesn’t work except you companion and collaborate. The place issues fail is when a single vendor or entity desires to manage every part. You may’t push out the stakeholders. We’re the glue within the center. Once you present 24/7 entry to a doctor, you could be the glue.
