Building infrastructure for a new era of distributed care delivery

An aging population. An increase in chronic diseases diagnosis. Skyrocketing costs of healthcare services. Hospitals running out of resources. All these factors, and more, have placed unprecedented new demands on our national healthcare systems. 

These developments made it necessary to implement innovative solutions to provide patient care. One model of care proving successful is remote patient monitoring (RPM). Another model is hospital-at-home, of which RPM is a part. Hospital-at-home care treats acute and common medical conditions at home, to avoid hospital admission. This method of delivering care can create cost efficiencies for the healthcare organization (HCO), improve outcomes, and deliver a better experience for patients. Additionally, HCOs are creating hospital-at-home programs to help underserved populations while also conserving healthcare resources. All across America, an increasing number of hospitals are offering acute care at home, and doctors leading those programs say they are impressed by how patients are responding.

Hospital-at-home “provides active treatment by healthcare professionals in the patient's home for a condition that would otherwise require hospitalization” according to the National Library of Medicine.  These programs typically incorporate multidisciplinary care teams delivering a full bundle of services after an early discharge, or an emergency room visit without the patient being hospitalized. 

Technological advancements are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, with a focus on improving patient outcomes, delivering cost-effective care, and enhancing the overall patient experience. With the increased use of hospital-at-home and of telehealth, IT leaders must expand their view of connectivity beyond the hospital walls. Providing connectivity where and when patients and staff need it has become a vital factor in ensuring that patients receive quality virtual care and monitoring.

By April 2024, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had authorized 320 hospitals in 37 states to offer acute hospital care at home, and those numbers are climbing. The caveat here is that all communications and collaboration must occur over a highly secure platform that is HIPAA-Compliant and HITRUST-certified, to protect the healthcare organization and the patient. The good news is that these infrastructures and secure networking options exist today.

Connectivity provides the foundation for innovation

Robust, scalable and secure connectivity is the foundation for distributed care delivery, enabling HCOs to offer personalized care at home, improve clinical outcomes, and continue to reshape the future of patient care. Right now, few HCOs have secure and seamless data pipelines that encompass all their major infrastructure components.

Healthcare IT executives must evaluate existing network architecture; find areas to improve digital experiences and secure data; and work across the entire organization to develop baseline standards that align with capabilities while preparing for future needs.

“It is crucial to put modern infrastructure in place that scales efficiently as bandwidth needs increase,” says Andrew Craver, Vice President of Segment Marketing at Spectrum Enterprise. “To do so, healthcare organizations need a technology partner able to design, deploy and support modern networking solutions that prove resilient and reliable over time. By leaving the design, implementation and management tasks to network engineering experts, healthcare organizations free themselves up to focus their IT teams on delivering the best possible care.”

Opportunities in distributed care

Patient care continues to move beyond the traditional healthcare facility, promising improved outcomes and other benefits, but placing increased demands on healthcare provider networks and digital transformation. In this era of more distributed healthcare delivery, the shift of the patient’s bed outside the hospital walls presents significant opportunities. Advances in remote monitoring technologies and connected devices are streamlining critical data delivery with advanced connectivity, making it easier for HCOs to coordinate care and keep close tabs on patients without staffers being physically present.

Care at home offers potential advantages to the right patients — namely, those with acute medical conditions who otherwise don’t require 24/7 nursing supervision. They can recover in a familiar space, where the risk of hospital bought infection, or a fall, is significantly reduced. On the operations side, overhead costs and readmissions are reduced.

American Hospital Association data shows that hospital-at-home can cost approximately 40% less than a similar hospitalization and reduce hospital readmission rates. Looking specifically at the Acute Hospital Care at Home program, a Journal of the American Medical Association study found improved mortality rates and “minimal complications” that required an emergency department visit or readmission. HCOs should investigate the operational and technical infrastructure necessary to support hospital-at-home.

Patients need reliable technology to monitor vital signs and share the outcomes with their care teams. This includes the devices necessary as well as wired or cellular connectivity. To support shared decision-making, care teams need access to patients’ electronic health records, along with the ability to collaborate virtually and make the most appropriate care decisions for the patients they serve. Given that care teams may include paramedics, social workers, and therapists in addition to employed nurses or physicians, it means supporting stakeholders with highly variable clinical workflows and work settings.

Providers supporting hospital-at-home need technology infrastructure that delivers access to data, decision support, and collaboration without taking them out of the applications they already use. A trusted technology partner can implement a digital infrastructure that secures important health data and ensures information is accessible among clinicians, departments, and locations. As bandwidth intensive technologies such as AI appear across HCOs market, bandwidth and compute capacity upgrades across underlying networks can help to ensure consistent performance and scale for future growth. By simplifying IT infrastructure with managed services and a scalable network, HCOs can free up staff to focus on the mission of transforming lives through patient programs and care.

How Spectrum Enterprise can help

Healthcare practices can streamline connectivity care challenges by collaborating with a trusted partner to manage their network. For more than 10 years, we’ve partnered with 115,000+ healthcare organizations to provide technology and communication solutions. As a trusted information and communications technology provider, Spectrum Enterprise partners with HCOs to help them in understanding and deploying strong foundations for digital transformations. We offer HCOs solutions like secure Dedicated Fiber Internet (DFI) that integrate a fast, dependable, dedicated fiber internet service with enterprise-level cybersecurity protection, backed by our industry-leading service-level agreement (SLA) that includes 100% uptime.