A new partnership between acute-care-at-home technology firm Biofourmis and Georgia-based Augusta University Health could reduce traffic in emergency rooms and hospital admissions.
The two companies inked the deal last week in an effort to help expand AU Health’s Virtual Care at Home program across the continuum of care. AU Health launched the program two years ago to conserve hospital resources at a time when it was inundated with critically ill COVID-19 patients. The Virtual Care Program has resulted in positive outcomes for patients and has reduced hospital readmissions roughly 7%.
The partnership with Biofourmis could help AH Health scale the program to more patients, according to Matthew Lyon, MD, service chief for Virtual Care at AU Health.
“This collaboration also provides the opportunity to expand our program to include outpatient and post-discharge chronic condition management so we can prevent even more hospitalizations and readmissions and improve the overall quality of life for our patients, Lyon said in a statement.
The program will treat low-to-high complexity patients between the ages of 12 to 90, typically at the point of discharge from the emergency room. The conditions managed under Virtual Care at Home include pneumonia, heart failure, cellulitis, asthma and COVID-19. AU Health’s team will use BiofourmisCare monitoring equipment, virtual care solution and analytics platform to monitor patients enrolled into the program.
AU Health is the latest provider to team with Boston-based Biofourmis on a hospital-at-home program. Last month, Orlando Health announced a deal with the company to roll out an acute care at home program across its 23-hospital system in Florida. Biofourmis has launched similar programs with Wise Health System in Dallas and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Last year, Biofourmis received $300 million in Series D Funding from private equity firm General Atlantic, CVS Health and a number of investors to expand its offering of personal and predictive in-home care to a larger pool of patients.
