NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 25, 2012 – Alternate Solutions Healthcare System, a nationally recognized post-acute healthcare provider based out ofDayton, Ohio, has partnered with Medalogix, a Nashville-based technology company, to use a proprietary predictive modeling tool that seeks to reducere-hospitalization rates and boost quality of care for patients. Alternate Solutions is the first home care agency in the state of Ohio to deploy the revolutionary clinical toolset.
Beginning this October, Alternate Solutions’ partnership with Medalogix could be particularly valuable to the hospitals that discharge patients to the home care agency. New provisions of the Affordable Care Act go into effect in October that penalize hospitals when a patient is readmittedunder the same diagnosis within 30 days of his or her discharge – the penalty being that Medicare will not reimburse the hospital for care provided after the readmission.
“The significant potential Medalogix has for helping us to identity and devote extra resources to patients who are most likely to needrehospitalization is reason enough to deploy this new technology at Alternate Solutions,” said President and Co-Founder Tessie Ganzsarto. “However, the new requirements coming soon under the Affordable Care Act make this technologyparticularly important. Thanks to Medalogix, hospitals can have confidence that the patients they send to Alternate Solutions are less likely to be re-admitted – which represents a tremendous cost savings for them.”
Ganzsarto says the technology will enable her organization to provide enhanced care through its cutting-edge focus on the two most significant factors in predicting geriatric patient re-hospitalization: medication and geography.
“There is ample research to support the idea that factoring in the specific geography of a patient population is necessary for accuratepredictive modeling,” Ganzsarto said. “Medalogix has created a unique tool that accounts for the geographic factor as well as the hugely significant factor of patient medication.”
Studies have shown that up to 31 percent of elderly patient hospital admissions are associated with drug-related problems. Over the three-year period the Medalogix predictive algorithms have been in development, they have demonstrated the ability to predict a patient’s risk of hospitalization with an accuracy exceeding 74 percent.
“While predictive modeling is not new in the home health care space, the Medalogix approach is the first of its kind,” said Medalogix CEO Dan Hogan. “Through an emphasis on factoring in medication risk as the primary driver of re-hospitalization, our company systematically isolates avariable that accounts for up to a third of all geriatric hospital admissions.”
Alternate Solutions Healthcare System began in Dayton in 1999 and has since expanded into operating 30 separate healthcare businesses in four states throughout the Midwest. Ganzsarto cites the agency’s meticulous patient admission protocol as a key to its success in the industry. Rather than adhere solely to an initial assessment in the patient’s home – typical of most home health care agencies – Alternate Solutions evaluates all of its patients with a second step in the assessment process, requiring each one to come into the office for a thorough interview and informational analysis. This decreases the possibility of critical patient information somehow slipping through the cracks, and acts as a safeguard against a patient’s chances of requiring re-hospitalization.
Ganzsarto expects the Medalogix tools to provide even stronger assurances to Alternate Solutions patients and their families.
“The Medalogix tools will identify and direct attention to patients who need it the most,” she said. “We know that 25 percent of the American population is chronically ill, and this accounts for 75 percent ofhealth care expenditures. The inestimable value Medalogix provides home health care agencies and hospitals will result in more time spent on acutely ill patients, ultimately reducing wasted time, spend and resources for all parties involved.”
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About AlternateSolutions Healthcare System: Founded in 1999 by Tessie and David Ganzsarto, Alternate Solutions is recognized as an industry leader in post-acute strategic partnerships. It has strategic partnerships with health care systems in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and WestVirginia, and is in conversation with several groups throughout the country to form more. Alternate Solutions has received numerous awards and recognitions for excellence its fields, including being ranked by HomeCare Elite™ in the top 1 percent of home health care agencies in the United States. The award is based upon an analysis of performance measures in quality of care, quality improvement and financial performance.
About Medalogix: Medalogix was formed out of the idea that homebound patients would benefit from a more in-depth analysis of the risks associated with their medications, and that home care agencies, when armed with that analysis, would be better able to remediate that risk. A litany of studies has shown that patient outcomes are far better the longer a patient can remain in the home. It is Medalogix’s goal to assist home care agencies with the process of identifying those patients on their census that are most at risk of requiring unplanned hospital care. The company combines its knowledge of medication risk with a home health are agency’s own clinical data to build a predictive modeling capability that is more accurate than any other risk assessment toolset on the market today
