UC San Diego Health has launched a six-year, $40 million initiative alongside healthcare policy and access nonprofit West Health to build out a “tech-forward model” of coordinated care.
The West Health Accelerator at UC San Diego Health plans to implement the eventual care model within the academic system and then share that model with other health systems across the nation. Its key focus is to deliver timely and personalized care across multiple settings and regardless of where a patient is in their care journey.
"UC San Diego Health finds itself at a pivotal moment in its growth," Patty Maysent, CEO of UC San Diego Health, said in the partners’ announcement. "As we expand our geographical footprint and lifesaving medical and surgical programs, the Accelerator will help us to continuously design and deliver coordinated, timely and reliable care across multiple hospital campuses and ambulatory clinics, and when possible, at home, aided by wearable technologies."
The organizations have collaborated for over a decade to develop a national standard of care for older patients, culminating in the opening of California’s first accredited senior emergency care unit and the spread of Geriatric Emergency Department accreditations across the broader San Diego County.
The new push will be centered on the system’s Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation, whose members target ethical care technology development and deployment. The Accelerator will build on that work to expand the use of advanced technologies, data and the electronic health record at UC San Diego Health’s “mission control” care coordination hub.
"Our teams are launching a number of initiatives implementing advanced technologies into clinical practice, including virtual care platforms and seamless integration of health data to benefit patients and providers,” said Theodore (Ted) Chan, M.D., chair of the health system’s emergency medicine department and the Accelerator’s inaugural executive director.
UC San Diego Health, part of the broader University of California Medical Centers, comprises three hospitals with over 1,000 beds, various specialty centers and a growing network of clinics. It’s the area’s only academic health system and said it expects the Accelerator to help address the growing demand for senior care as well as to boost its outward expansion.
West Health has been funding and launching such accelerators with major health systems and hospital groups across the industry, including Mass General Brigham, Northwestern Medicine and Duke-Margolis.
May saw the announcement of a three-year collaboration with the American Hospital Association’s Research and Education Trust, for which the nonprofit group committed $12 million toward its goal of technology adoption and scaling. Another partnership with the National Committee for Quality Assurance, unveiled in April, aims to better integrate behavioral health into primary care settings by developing a standardized set of quality measures.