person in bed

When physical therapist Jackleen Samuel launched Resilient Healthcare three years ago, it was tough to get hospital systems and health insurers to buy into the idea of hospital-at-home and long-term acute care at home. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

Headshot of Jackleen Samuel
Jackleen Samuel

“COVID hit and that made us sexy because everybody wanted to stay at home,” Samuel told McKnight’s Home Care Daily.

The Plano, TX-based home healthcare firm currently serves northern Texas, but Samuel expects the firm will bring hospital-at-home and long-term acute care at home to patients in at least 10 states by the end of this year.

Timing and technology are the accelerants behind Resilient Healthcare’s growth plans.

Two years after Resilient Healthcare launched, the pandemic prompted the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to drive more acute care into the home with its Hospital Without Walls program. Rochester, MN-based Mayo Clinic and Oakland, CA-based Kaiser Permanente are among the larger players in the sector.

Technology is also moving Resilient Healthcare into the big leagues and is among the four pillars that define the company. Resilient developed a proprietary software system called Artic Health that Samuel described as a plug-and-play system handling everything from scheduling to logistics to insurance authorization. 

“The software that we created does a lot of that workflow management, so we can deploy it to other hospitals and health systems so that they can participate in a hospital-at-home program or a virtual mobile health system without having to go through months of training and manual entries and all of that,” Samuel said.  

Technology also helps drive the company’s other pillars: health system compatibility, clinician efficiency and patient-friendly care. Samuel said Resilient uses a high-touch, high-tech approach to treating patients. 

““When we are bringing care to patients, it’s a lot of logistics and care coordination. If a physician is going to round on a patient every day at 11 a.m., then we need to make sure that we have blood draws done early in the morning, get them to a lab, processed and results in prior to that rounding.” Samuel explained. 

While healthcare systems have been embracing hospital-at-home, payers are now starting to catch onto it as well. Resilient recently partnered with Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare in a deal that will provide in-network hospital-at-home services to enrollees. Other insurance plans only cover Resilient Healthcare’s services in some preferred provider organizations (PPOs).

Samuel thinks as the industry moves from a fee-for-service model to a value-based care model, more care will move to the home.

“I am a huge fan of value-based contracts. I know most providers are not, but I think it keeps providers honest and I am a provider and a clinician by trade, so I am okay with that,” Samuel said. 

Samuel’s father inspired her to launch her company. A bout with cancer and a series of strokes sent him in and out of hospitals over a period of years. That is a scenario she hopes her company can help others avoid.

“It’s a burden for patients and it’s a burden for families,” Samuel said.

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This article originally appeared on McKnight's Senior Living