Stephen Parodi, MD, discusses drive to deliver hospital-level care at home

During the recent 2022 Virtual Leadership Symposium hosted by the American College of Healthcare Executives, Stephen Parodi, MD, executive vice president of The Permanente Federation, outlined 4 factors motivating Kaiser Permanente and other health care organizations to advocate for permanent payment and coverage options supporting the delivery of hospital-level care in patients’ homes.

“First, we fundamentally have a hospital capacity problem in the United States and the pandemic sort of brought that out,” Dr. Parodi said during the panel, “Hospital at Home: Creating Value for Patients and Providers.”

A second factor behind the movement to deliver more advanced care at home is a greater awareness that treating the whole person must include addressing the social determinants that affect a patient’s health, and how that work integrates with medical care.

“The only way to do that is to have greater insight into what’s going on with that person’s family, with their home, and with their interactions and the safety of what’s occurring in that home,” Dr. Parodi said. “That need has come to the fore with equitable care, and you can’t do that unless you’re meeting the person where they are.”

Delivering advanced care in patients’ homes also enables health care professionals to meet people “where they are” by providing access to care to patients who cannot travel to a hospital or clinic.

Finally, addressing acute health conditions in the home has become easier thanks to technology that enables the delivery of hospital-level care at scale, using remote patient monitoring that “gets me the information I need as a clinician, and in near real-time,” Dr. Parodi said.

Note: To view a replay of the full panel, visit the ACHE 2022 Virtual Leadership Symposium website.