UCI Health, DispatchHealth Partner to Launch At-Home Care Program

Orange, California-based UCI Health is entering the home health arena through a new partnership with at-home care provider DispatchHealth.

Per the partnership, UCI Health will use DispatchHealth's platform to coordinate and deliver care directly in patients' homes. The company provides direct-to-consumer at-home care services, and it partners with health systems and payers to provide home care, including Humana, Texas Health Resources and Regence BlueShield.

The UCI Health DispatchHealth service will treat simple and complex illnesses as well as minor injuries, including bronchitis, influenza, respiratory infections, minor fractures, diarrhea, and urinary tract infections.

"UCI Health is honored to be the first healthcare system in California to offer our patients and the community this exciting program," said Chad T. Lefteris, CEO of the health system, in a news release.

The service, which will be available to patients throughout Orange County, is in-network with most health insurance plans and is often the same out-of-pocket cost as an in-network urgent care center, according to the press release.

"Many health systems have a strong desire to deliver home-based care, and DispatchHealth can provide a proven platform to quickly extend care outside of the typical clinic and hospital setting," said Mark Prather, MD, co-founder and CEO of DispatchHealth, in the news release.

Further, patients identified as being at high-risk of readmission following a hospital procedure will have access to in-home care for a day or two post-discharge through the new partnership. Known as DispatchHealth Bridge Care, this service aims to identify care gaps and connect the patient back to their primary care physician or specialist in the community.

"Healthcare is rapidly changing and what our patients want has evolved throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic," said Susanna Rustad, UCI Health's executive director of virtual care, in the press release. "DispatchHealth will help us meet our patients where they are and where they want to receive care, in their homes."

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred the already rising interest in home-based healthcare. Within the past week or so, two major health systems — Jefferson Health and Penn State Health — have launched their respective home health programs.

This comes just one month after several prominent health systems, like Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, and Johns Hopkins Medicine, launched a coalition to advocate for strategies that support the delivery of hospital-level care at home.

Home healthcare is also gaining traction at the federal level, with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launching the Acute Hospital Care at Home program last year. This program enables participating hospitals to treat some acute care patients at home using telehealth and remote patient monitoring. Eighty-three health systems were approved to participate in the program as of Nov. 15.