by Josh Drummond, Enterprise Account Executive, South — SumoLogic
The Tennessee Chapter of HIMSS visited Covenant Health on October 19. Special thanks to Mike Ward, Tiffany Cross, Chris Skinner and their teams for hosting and providing an excellent tour of their Virtual Care Operations Center. Tennessee HIMSS members that represent many of the leading technology, professional services, consulting, and staffing organizations in Healthcare Technology were given a behind the scenes look at how Covenant Health is delivering hospital-level care to patients in their own homes.
Covenant Health refers to this as their “Advanced Care at Home” program. They are the first health system in the region to offer innovative, hospital-level healthcare, in the comfort of a patient’s own home. Covenant Health launched the program at Parkwest Medical Center and plans to expand it to their other acute-care hospitals over the next 2-3 years.
Advanced Care at Home leverages technology to deliver services like 24/7/365 patient monitoring, medication management, infusion services, oxygen, and rehabilitation therapy in the home. Chris and Tiffany mentioned COPD, heart failure, soft tissue infections, and gastroenteritis as examples of conditions that are eligible for the program today and that the list continues to grow as they scale their partnership with Medically Home. The program also comes with a technology kit for the patient’s home that enables the patient and their family to communicate with their care team whenever necessary.
The attendees also had an opportunity to learn about Covenant Health’s partnership and investment in Ten Hats, the first carrier-neutral colocation provider in the East TN Region. Covenant Health’s Virtual Care Center and Ten Hats actually share a purpose-built Tier III+ facility with robust resiliency and security to ensure that the critical services offered from this location are always available to the patients and providers that rely on them.
The evening concluded with a great meal and conversation at Ruth’s Chris Knoxville. Thanks again to the Covenant Health’s leadership team for providing such an insightful look into the future of virtual healthcare delivery.