HARTFORD, Conn. (March 20, 2020)—CareCentrix announced that it is extending its advanced home technology package including telehealth, care collaboration and home monitoring tools at no cost to its network of 8,000 home health locations. CareCentrix’s home telehealth platform allows agencies to better manage, monitor and care for patients in their homes rather than hospitals and subacute facilities.
During the March 17, 2020, White House press conference on COVID-19, CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced sweeping coverage of telehealth visits for all Medicare beneficiaries including nursing home and outpatient departments, and suggested that all private health plans follow suit. The lack of previous incentives to invest in technology means that many organizations may not have existing telehealth capabilities. CareCentrix will meet this need by providing telehealth platform access for its 8,000 home health agencies to help meet the immediate need related to COVID-19.
Older adults and patients managing chronic respiratory and cardiac diseases are at greatest risk of complications from COVID-19. Allowing access to home services virtually is vital to ensuring our health care system does not become overburdened during this public health emergency. Home health providers are critical to this effort, providing nursing, therapy services, and medical equipment in the home.
“We are proud to do our part to deploy every tool at our disposal to ensure the safety of Americans and slow the threat of an extended pandemic by opening access to care for vulnerable populations,” said John Driscoll, CEO of CareCentrix. Driscoll added, “Technologies like telehealth and remote monitoring have operated on the periphery of our system like urgent care and small pilots. No longer. This is the new and evolving norm. We must do what it takes to safely extend care to patients.”
CareCentrix’s network of 8,000 home health agency locations supports 14,500 patients daily with critical home health needs like skilled nursing, therapies, infusion, oxygen and durable medical equipment, many of whom are at higher risk of infection. CareCentrix president and COO, Laizer Kornwasser, described the industry response, “Our health plan clients are quickly endorsing this capability and we have already received an extremely positive response from our home health agency partners.”
The package of services will be available immediately to CareCentrix’s 8,000 home health agency locations through our unique partnership with Synzi and Dina. It includes patient-to-provider and three-way virtual health capabilities to enable patients to include remote family members or caregivers in visits, remote monitoring, secure messaging and clinical analytics.
Jasen Gundersen, MD, MBA, Chief Medical Officer of CareCentrix said, “Participating agencies will have tools and technology to support patients and supplement in-person visits and to monitor patient conditions and symptoms in real-time. We are adding tele-nursing and remote physical therapy visits to support their patients over the course of the next weeks and months.”
CareCentrix network providers will be receiving more information shortly or can access the information at carecentrix.com/telehealth.
