Part 3 of 4 – Triple Aim for Communities:  Healthcare Delivery.

Hospital-acquired infections cost the American healthcare system $30 – $40 billion annually.  Two million Americans acquire an infection in the hospital every year, and 100,000 people die of them (Tina Rosenberg, The New York Times, April 25, 2011).  Would you like to know the biggest technological advance in treating hospital acquired infections?  Can you imagine the expense and complexity of tackling such a huge problem?

Here’s the answer:  Hand washing!  Something as simple and inexpensive as washing your hands before and after going into a patient’s room dramatically reduces hospital acquired infections and saves thousands of lives annually.

Here’s the lesson:  Simple solutions are easily overlooked but can often have the greatest impact.  Remember what started the downfall of the Healthcare Giant in Part 2 of this series…his little toe!

Here’s how we apply the lesson in communities:  In Part 1, we described Dr. Berwick’s vision of better health, better care, lower cost which is a top down approach directed towards institutions to tackle the Healthcare giant by reorienting the services they provide.  House Calls takes the opposite approach.  We start at the other end of the giant (the “little toe”) to achieve an impact.  We believe that the greatest impact in communities will result by improving healthcare DELIVERY while using existing services.

Our approach is:

• targeted (seniors)
• focused (retirement communities)
• efficient (low overhead, efficient delivery)
• will develop additional opportunities (the establishment of a Mobile Medical Home and ultimately a Home Hospital – both subjects of future blogs).

We begin small so that we can refine our model and prove and promote our successes, and we’ll then expand to as many retirement communities as possible.

Here is the House Calls Triple Aim model for Communities:

Location:  Retirement Communities.

Visibility:  Daily presence of a House Call representative within the Retirement Community easily reminds seniors of House Calls services, allows frequent and unhurried conversations, builds familiarity and relationships.

Accessibility:  The House Calls physician is easy to access and provides care as a home visit in the comfort and convenience of the residents own apartment.  Seniors no longer need to prolong failing health or avoid physician care due to difficulty in accessing their physician (difficulty scheduling appointments, arranging transportation, etc.).

The Triple Aim for Communities is simple, practical, and builds partnerships in the community that will help achieve its goals.

Now comes Part 4 – the merging of the Triple Aims!  This is exciting, because this is where we put the nail in the coffin of the healthcare giant!!!