How to Take Care of a Patient with Complex Disease at Home?

Patients with complex health care need account for an outsized share of our country’s annual medical expenses. They represent a chance to rein in rising health care expenditures by improving their condition management, preventing hospitalizations, and avoiding emergency department visits.

What does care management involve?

Care management is a collection of activities aimed at optimizing patient care and reducing the demand for medical services by streamlining care coordination, eliminating duplication, and assisting patients and caregivers in managing health conditions more efficiently. These initiatives have shown promise in terms of improving quality and cost control for patients with complicated diseases.

What are the many types of home health care?

The spectrum of home health care options available to patients is virtually unlimited. Depending on the state of the patient, care might range from healthcare to specialist medical services like as laboratory workouts. You and your doctor will decide on your healthcare plan and on any necessary in-home treatments. Among the services available for in-home care are the following:

Doctor’s attention

A physician may make a home visit to diagnose and treat a patient’s ailment (es). Additionally, they may do periodic reviews of the home health care needs.

Providing nursing care

The most prevalent sort of home health care is nursing care, which varies according to the individual’s needs. A registered nurse will develop a plan of treatment in cooperation with the doctor. Nursing care may involve wound dressing, ostomy care, intravenous therapy, pharmaceutical administration, patient monitoring, pain management, and other health assistance.

Physical, occupational, and speech therapy treatments include

After an illness or accident, some patients may require assistance relearning how to perform daily tasks or improving their voice. A physical therapist can construct a therapy plan to help a patient recover or strengthen their muscle and joint function. An occupational therapist can help a patient with physical, mental, social, or emotional problems rediscover how regular tasks such as eating, bathing, and clothing can be carried out. A speech therapist can assist a patient who has difficulty communicating clearly in regaining that capacity.

Social, medical services

Patients with varied services, including counselling and the location of community resources for their recovery, are helped by health care providers. Certain social workers also serve as the patient’s case manager—particularly when the patient’s medical condition is complicated and requires coordination of numerous services.

Assistance provided by home health aides

A home health assistant can assist the patient with daily activities such as getting out of bed, walking, showering, and clothing. Certain aides have acquired further training to assist nurses with more specialized care.

Care for the homemaker or those in need of basic assistance

While a patient is receiving medical treatment at home, a homemaker or someone who assists with household duties or responsibilities can help maintain the household by preparing meals, doing laundry, grocery shopping, and performing other housekeeping jobs.

Bringing The House Call Back To Life

Primary home care – or the modern house visit – provides primary care for the healthiest (and most costly) homebound and homemaker in society. Typically, these patients do not receive ongoing follow-up care, which perpetuates the cycle of poor health management and makes it even more expensive and time-consuming for patients and caregivers.

The concept of a “home call” is not new. At one point in our country’s history, physicians frequently made house calls, accompanied by their trademark black bags.

Technology is a critical enabler of today’s home-based primary care. Electronic medical records enable almost anywhere access to patient charts. Blood and laboratory tests can be performed in minutes at home, or drawn and spun down in a centrifuge in the automobile and transported to a laboratory. Portable x-ray and ultrasound machines are now available, and a smartphone may be used as an electrocardiogram, an ultrasound console, a portal to medical references (such as textbooks and drug databases), and a means of transferring papers via remote scanning and printing.

Recognize the Advantages

Home-based primary care has been demonstrated to minimize medical crises while also enhancing patient and caregiver satisfaction, fragmented care, missed appointments, and poor control of chronic conditions—the factors most frequently cited for emergency department visits, readmissions, acute hospitalizations, and institutionalization in this population. Additionally, home-based primary care alleviates stress and other difficulties for everyone involved in a patient’s care.

Additionally, home-based primary care enables accountable care organizations (ACOs) and Medicare Advantage programmes to optimize care coordination and quality for their most expensive patients. It greatly lowers the cost of nursing home care while increasing patient happiness.

Patients with Complex Medical Needs Benefit from In-Home Medical Care with Melodia Care

Patients with complex and chronic diseases account for the majority of the 5% of patients who account for 50% of all healthcare spending. Melodia is providing Hospice care at home, bereavement support, Inpatient hospice care,

and palliative care, in Fremont California, USA.

The growth of this population has resulted in a rise in national healthcare costs. One of the key reasons these complex patients are more expensive to treat is because they have decreased mobility and have trouble visiting doctors offices on a regular basis. These individuals frequently seek urgent care from ambulatory services such as urgent care centres or emergency rooms. These emergency visits frequently result in avoidable hospitalizations.

Chronic diseases that are prevalent among Melodia Care patients

Melodia Care patients often have a number of chronic diseases. The most often seen conditions among Melodia Care patients are as follows:

• Depression
• Hypertension
• Dementia
• COPD
• Diabetes
• Cardiovascular disease
• Chronic nephropathy
• Diseases of the arteries
• Cancer

What criteria are used to select Melodia Care patients?

Melodia Care patients are individuals who have been classified as high risk by their health plan and have a minimum of five chronic diseases. Once a patient is accepted into the programme, a Melodia Care care manager conducts an evaluation and produces a customised care plan that takes the patient’s goals into account.

Melodia Care services include, but are not limited to the following:

• Visits that are required immediately
• Routine examinations
• Following-discharge care
• 24-hour telephone assistance

Melodia Care’s collaborations with health plans include a home-based clinical model that includes house calls, 24-hour telephone and in-person support, and an interdisciplinary care team. Melodia Care is staffed by physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse care managers, social workers, pharmacists, nutritionists, and behavioural health providers.

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