By Katarina A. Lewczyk
In late October, the UMass Memorial Health (UMMH) Hospital at Home (HAH) team was awarded the “Hospital at Home Program of the Year,” and the “Hospital at Home Patient Video of the Year,” by the American Academy of Home Care Medicine (AAHCM) HAH User’s Group, a professional society that oversees and advocates for hospital at home services across the country. On receiving these honors on behalf of the UMMH HAH team, Constantinos (Taki) Michaelidis, MD, MBA, MS, medical director for the UMMH HAH program, and assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine, Candra Szymanski, MSN, RN, AVP for the UMMH HAH program stated, “The number of people who have been reaching out to [our team to] congratulate [us]…has just been deeply humbling. We are proud of our team and are truly just getting started!”
The UMMH HAH Program – approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services hospital at home waiver program – launched in August 2021 and provides hospital-level care to patients in the comfort of their homes through a combination of in-person and telehealth visits, tailored to the specific needs of the patient. The program has seen strong outcomes, improving patient satisfaction and safety and lowering readmissions and mortality.
Dr. Michaelidis and his team recently attended the AAHCM Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, where they presented a poster on the outstanding quality and safety outcomes in some of the most complex HAH patient admissions, as they center their work on reducing 30-day readmissions in patients with Medicaid. He and his team also led a panel, “Hospital at Home-View from the C-Suite!”, where they highlighted the critical importance of the C-Suite level efforts by Eric Alper, MD, chief quality officer, chief clinical informatics officer, vice president, and professor of medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine, David McManus, MD, ScM, chair, and professor of medicine in the Department of Medicine, Justin Precourt, chief nursing officer at UMMH, Eric Dickson, MD, MHCH, FACEP, president and chief executive officer of UMMH, among others, who advocate for and support the HAH team. Additionally, during the panel, one of their HAH patients joined to speak about their positive experience of being cared for by their team.
Along with their AAHCM awards and presentations at the Annual Meeting, HAH team nurses Melissa Ohman-Ramadan, RN, and Lisa DeBoise, RN, have also been recognized with Daisy Awards for their extraordinary care. Melissa and Lisa were praised for their recent patient care, spending their day off at the home of a patient living with heart failure who was struggling with social determinant, nutrition, and medication challenges. They went above and beyond to provide excellent patient care, while also working to improve safety in the home, share educational resources and refer the patient to community-based resource to combat these challenges.
Congratulations to the entire HAH team for their extraordinary work. These accolades are well-deserved!