SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cedars-Sinai is launching Safe Transition Home, a program designed to smoothly transition patients from the hospital to their home with the goal of reducing inpatient readmissions, raising patient satisfaction and improving health outcomes — challenges facing hospitals nationwide.
The new program is a partnership between Cedars-Sinai and HomeHero, a Santa Monica-based non-medical home care provider that leverages smart technology and human compassion to extend the health system into the home. HomeHero is one of 11 startups participating in the 2016 Techstars Healthcare Accelerator to develop healthcare innovations. The accelerator is a partnership between Cedars-Sinai and Techstars, the best global ecosystem for entrepreneurs to bring new technologies to market.
“We are truly excited to be working with HomeHero, both at the operational level and within the Cedars-Sinai and Techstars Healthcare Accelerator program,” says Bradley T. Rosen, MD, MBA, FHM, Director of Care Transitions and Complex Medical Management at Cedars-Sinai. “They are a mature team with impressive individuals on both the healthcare and tech sides, and they are thinking creatively about how best to tackle fundamental challenges in patient care. I believe the Safe Transition Home program is the first of many initiatives that will effectively improve the quality of care our patients receive.”
High readmission rates have long been a challenge for the healthcare industry. The Safe Transition Home program aims to address long-standing transitional care challenges by providing licensed and trained home care professionals as a post-acute extension of Cedars-Sinai’s healthcare continuum.
The program also helps Cedars-Sinai address comprehensive regulatory changes set in place by the Affordable Care Act and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), such as steep fines for 30-day hospital readmissions and bundled payment systems emphasizing value-based care.
HomeHero’s caregivers, referred to as “Heroes,” provide comprehensive assistance with activities of daily living such as personal care, housekeeping and medication management. Safe Transition Home covers additional service such as transportation to and from follow-up appointments with the patient’s physicians.
Caregivers also become the eyes and ears of the hospital in the home with the aid of technology. Equipped with a mobile app leveraging Apple’s new CareKit platform, the “Heroes” conduct guided safety checks in the home, record patient health information, monitor social determinants and deliver critical real-time data back to families and case managers in the hospital.
“The first six weeks of our time at Cedars-Sinai has been spent learning about the deep inner-workings of hospitals and identifying the biggest areas of need,” said Kyle Hill, co-founder and CEO of HomeHero. “We felt Safe Transition Home was the best program to build first due to its low cost and risk, broad impact across multiple units and speed to implement.”
The program is funded through a combination of private clients and Cedars-Sinai.
For more information about the Safe Transition Home program visit: www.homehero.org/sth.
About HomeHero
HomeHero is a non-medical home care provider that leverages smart technology and human compassion to extend the health system into the home. With hundreds of licensed and trained “Heroes,” HomeHero has grown to be one of the largest and most trusted home care providers in California, offering a wide range of post-acute services such as personal care and companionship, transitional care, postoperative recovery, medication management, transportation and assistance with activities of daily living. HomeHero was launched in May 2013 by Kyle Hill and Mike Townsend, originally as a service for their own families. The company is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, and has raised $23 million in venture funding from Graham Holdings, Social+Capital Partnership, Science Inc, The Launch Fund, Tencent Holdings, Techstars and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. For more information, visit www.homehero.org.
About Cedars-Sinai
Cedars-Sinai, the largest nonprofit academic medical center in the western United States, is known internationally for providing the highest-quality, most advanced patient care. Over its 113-year history, Cedars-Sinai has evolved to meet the needs of one of the most diverse regions in the nation, setting standards in quality and innovative patient care, research, teaching and community service. Cedars-Sinai has a long history of transforming healthcare — at the bedside, in the clinic and in the community. Innovations from Cedars-Sinai include the invention of the Swan-Ganz catheter to measure blood pressure inside the heart, the start-up of a company that developed one of the world’s top evidence-based clinical decision-support systems for physicians, and the first experimental use of stem cells to cure heart disease.
About Techstars
Techstars is a global ecosystem that empowers entrepreneurs to bring new technologies to market wherever they choose to build their business. With 18 mentorship-driven accelerator programs worldwide, Techstars exists to support the world’s most promising entrepreneurs throughout their lifelong journey. Techstars provides access to over 3,000 founders, mentors investors, and corporate partners, allowing entrepreneurs to accelerate the pace of innovation and do more faster. Techstars makes entrepreneurship more accessible by providing access to capital, guidance, marketing, business development, customer acquisition, and recruitment. For more information, visit www.techstars.com.
