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The Unique Value of the Home-Visit Model, Explained

Author

Tiffany Pack


Published

April 13, 2022


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Doctor And An Elderly Patient Are Indoors At The Woman's Home
A doctor and an elderly patient are indoors at the woman's home. The doctor is talking to the woman and smiling while comforting her.

Many adults and seniors who suffer from debilitating illnesses often find it difficult to visit a doctor’s office in person to seek primary care. The lack of transportation resources can result in delayed care and unnecessary emergency room visits and hospitalizations that could have been avoided.

This is one of the challenges that the home-based care model aims to address. The primary care home visit model combines four components of care: clinical services, nursing care, social support, and psycho-spiritual care.

The highest quality primary care home-visiting programs, like Emcara Health, provide medical, behavioral, and even social support to high-risk adults in their own homes so they don’t have to visit a physician’s office or hospital unless absolutely essential. Home visits offers a unique opportunity to reach high-needs patients and solves the problem of access barriers, such as limited mobility and lack of transportation.

Benefits of Home-Visiting Models of Primary Care

Providing primary care at home is not only beneficial for the patients, but for care providers as well.

Research shows that burnout among primary care providers is a phenomenon that has reached epidemic levels during the global pandemic. Physicians, nurse practitioners, and other trained medical professionals are exhausted from the pressures of caring for critically ill COVID-19 patients. The pressure to see as many patients as possible each day does not help either.

Most providers enter fields such as primary care hoping they will get to focus on caring for their patients, build stronger relationships with their communities, promote healthy families, and see positive changes. Time pressure and bureaucratic tasks, however, have left many of them feeling like mice on wheels, running faster without gaining any ground.

With home-visiting programs, these compassionate care providers get a chance to fulfill their primary goal: truly connect with their patients, get to know them, and have frequent home visits to deliver broader, more holistic care. During home visits, providers are able to dig deeper to accurately determine patients’ health and social needs and to make sure they are being addressed and managed. 

What Makes Emcara Health’s Evidence-Based Model So Much Better than Traditional Models

Our care teams visit patients in their homes or wherever they live. We know that going out of the home for care is difficult, if not impossible, for patients with chronic or complex health issues. Something as simple as visiting a clinic can mean having to find someone to drive them, packing a walker, waiting in the waiting room, filling out numerous forms – all for a face-to-face visit with a doctor that may only last 15-20 minutes.

An Emcara Health patient doesn’t experience these hurdles or delay care; they spend no time or effort traveling and have more in-person time with board-certified providers in the comfort of their own home.

Also, patient relationship-building is one of our non-negotiable core practices. Our providers see patients in an environment that is comfortable and familiar for them and are able to spend as much as 12 hours or more per year with them, compared to about 20 minutes per year in a clinical setting.

Patients don’t have to wait to schedule an appointment when they experience symptoms or have concerns either. They can call their providers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even on evenings, weekends, and holidays. Our care teams don’t have typical office hours. While they work together to address issues before they arise, high availability of care is critical for high-need patients. 

Looking for a Reliable Partner for Home-Visiting Services? Contact Us!Over the last 7 years, Emcara Health’s evidence-based home visiting model of primary care delivery has achieved as much as 20% or more net reduction in the total cost of care for a variety of plan types, including Medicare Advantage, Managed Medicaid, and ACA. We have done this by addressing the holistic needs of patients to decrease unnecessary hospitalizations and ER visits. For more information, contact us online or call us at 615-721-7020.


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