BATON ROUGE, La.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Michael Fleming, MD, Fellow, American Academy of Family Physicians, and Chief Medical Officer of Amedisys Inc., a leading home care and hospice company, called for all health care providers to support the action briefs released by the National Priorities Partnership (NPP), describing opportunities for increasing value in health care.
The briefs outlined three key opportunities to help prevent up to $84 billion in wasteful health care spending:
1) A $21 Billion Opportunity: Preventing Medication Errors – through improved care coordination, communication and engagement of patients and their care givers
2) A $38 Billion Opportunity: Reducing Emergency Department (ED) Overuse – through patient-centered health care delivered at home, which has shown a 37 percent reduction in ED use, increased offering of weekend hours from primary care providers, increased use of interactive telehealth, and availability of 24/7 telephonic consultations with physicians and nurses
3) A $25 Billion Opportunity: Preventing Hospital Readmissions – through enhanced discharge planning, nurse advocacy for patients in managing follow-up care, medication reconciliation and pharmacist medication management oversight
“The rising cost of health care is the nation’s number one deficit problem - nothing else even comes close; and it will only grow as our baby boomer population begins to retire in droves,” said Dr. Fleming. “Health care providers across the system must pay attention to these findings and find a way to work together to do better. At Amedisys we are beginning to deliver on these proposed solutions by investing in programs such as Care Transitions, which provides comprehensive care coordination post-discharge; by implementing telehealth technology, which electronically monitors high-risk patients; and by providing a patient call center, Encore, for telephonic consultations. The NPP is right on target and we at Amedisys fully support its efforts,” he continued.
The NPP Compact Action Briefs can be found at: http://www.nationalprioritiespartnership.org/.
About Amedisys:
Amedisys, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMED) is the nation’s leading health care company focused on bringing home the continuum of care. Each day Amedisys delivers personalized health care services to more than 35,000 individual patients and their families, in the comfort of patients’ homes. Amedisys has two divisions, home health care and hospice. The Company’s state-of-the-art advanced chronic care management programs and leading-edge technology enables it to deliver quality care based upon the latest evidence-based best practices. Amedisys is a recognized innovator, being one of the first in the industry to equip its clinicians with point-of-care laptop technology and referring physicians with an internet portal that enables real-time coordination of patient care seamlessly. Amedisys also has the industry’s first-ever nationwide Care Transitions program. Amedisys Care Transitions is designed to reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions through patient and caregiver health coaching and care coordination, which starts in the hospital and continues throughout completion of the patient’s home health plan of care. For more information about the Company, please visit: www.amedisys.com.
CONTACT:
Amedisys, Inc.
Jacqueline Chen Valencia, 225-299-3688
[email protected]
KEYWORDS: United States North America Louisiana
INDUSTRY KEYWORDS: Health Hospitals Other Health General Health Managed Care
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