Best Buy Health, Mass General Brigham collaborate to serve patients at home

Following news in September that Best Buy Health and Geisinger were expanding their work to improve chronic disease management at home, Best Buy Health announced a collaboration with Mass General Brigham to support a new model of healthcare delivery that serves patients at home. 

Together, they will develop solutions to support the transformational movement of shifting health care to patients’ homes by improving how quality and safe care are provided with technology and clinical expertise. 

Their first priority is to scale and support Mass General Brigham’s Home Hospital. This technology-enabled clinical delivery model will expand access to Massachusetts residents choosing to receive acute-level hospital care in the comfort of their home. This collaboration also will help address one of the biggest challenges the healthcare industry faces today—workforce shortages, Mass General Brigham said.

Mass General Brigham’s Home Hospital is one of the largest acute home-based care models in the country and delivers care for patients who would otherwise need to be hospitalized for conditions such as heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, infections and more. Through the care of nurses, paramedics, advanced practice providers, physicians and other clinicians, Home Hospital patients receive access to the same best-in-class services received at Mass General Brigham’s nationally recognized, award-winning medical centers. The care creates quality health outcomes, is popular with patients and caregivers and studies show it lowers mortality rates, reduces hospital readmissions and decreases lengths of stay, Mass General Brigham said.

[Read more: Best Buy Health, Geisinger expand work to improve chronic disease management at home]

Additionally, Mass General Brigham operates the largest Medicare-certified home health business in New England, offering skilled and supportive services for patients who are homebound during the course of an illness or injury. Together, Home Hospital and Home Care are components of Mass General Brigham’s overall Healthcare at Home portfolio, which will now be supported by Best Buy Health.

Best Buy has a retail footprint of nearly 1,000 stores, a robust digital retail experience through BestBuy.com and the Best Buy App, and the ability to provide technology, omnichannel logistics and human-centered support. With a proven track record of successfully leveraging these assets to deliver positive outcomes, this collaboration with Mass General Brigham furthers Best Buy Health’s commitment to enabling care in the home for everyone.

Together, Best Buy Health and Mass General Brigham will develop customized systems and capabilities to enhance the experience for patients receiving Home Hospital care as well as for the multi-dimensional care team that provides it.

In addition to developing new solutions, Mass General Brigham will leverage Best Buy Health’s existing technology and support services, including:

• Current Health, the company’s care-at-home platform, which connects patients to nurses, paramedics, advanced practitioners and physicians;
• Services that enable better coordination of how home-based care is delivered and logistics management to support the patient’s broad care team; and
• Lively Mobile Plus, their personal emergency response system (PERS) device which can detect falls and enable patients to contact an Urgent Response Agent.

“More people than ever before are comfortable with the idea of receiving care in their homes, but we know that bringing care across that threshold isn’t as easy as it sounds,” said Deborah Di Sanzo, president of Best Buy Health. “Together, Best Buy Health and Mass General Brigham will create long lasting solutions that will support the rapid growth of the care at home market and all of those who play key roles in delivering quality care in the home to patients who need and deserve it.” 

“At Mass General Brigham, we are building the integrated healthcare system of the future across the entire continuum of patient care needs,” said Heather O’Sullivan, president of Healthcare at Home at Mass General Brigham. “As a recognized leader of Home Hospital services, we understand that consumers are increasingly choosing the comfort of care at home as an alternative to traditional, facility-based delivery settings. By enabling our world-class provider services with technology that matters, we are elevating system capabilities and, most importantly, improving clinical outcomes for the communities we serve today while preparing for the future delivery of care more broadly.”

[Read more: Best Buy to sell Dexcom continuous glucose monitoring system]

"While workforce shortages plague the healthcare industry and threaten the ability of healthcare systems, the Home Hospital experience has shown an increase in employee satisfaction through innovative hybrid practice options and a reduction of clinician burnout."

As part of this relationship, Best Buy Health and Mass General Brigham will engage with and make significant investments in the community to enable the next generation of the Healthcare at Home workforce. To do this they will create equitable, academic opportunities for individuals interested in pursuing nursing, paramedic and digital technology careers by offering scholarships to students choosing the at-home setting of care as their desired professional environment. They also will work to bring care in the home to the forefront of curriculum within these industries to further support the growing home healthcare model.