Prospect ECHN, which owns Manchester Memorial and Rockville General hospitals, has launched a partnership with DispatchHealth to offer urgent medical care visits to area homes.
A Colorado-based company, DispatchHealth, focuses on providing home medical visits throughout the country, and its medical teams include a nurse practitioner and an EMT, according to Nina Kruse, spokeswoman for Prospect ECHN.
Kruse said DispatchHealth also has on-call emergency room doctors who are available for consultation during these home visits. The nurse practitioner would be able to prescribe medications and the company would update the patient’s primary care physicians after providing home care.
“The easiest way to think about it is anything you would typically go to a walk-in urgent care for would be performed by DispatchHealth,” said Dan Delgallo, chief strategy officer for ECHN. A child with a suspected ear infection, for example, rather than an elder experiencing heart attack symptoms.
DispatchHealth bills insurance companies for the visits, or charges a $275 flat rate for those who are uninsured. It provides visits 365 days a year from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and wait times average two hours.
Tiffany Gelsomino, Prospect ECHN’s director of business development, said company officials “are really excited about” the partnership, which she said “definitely fills a need” in the community.
Gelsomino said the two companies act as “partners in care,” with ECHN offering follow-up primary care after a patients’ urgent needs are met at home.
“If the patient does need access to something that’s not in the scope of what DispatchHealth can do, we certainly want to make sure that we can help lap around and care for the patient in whatever ways they might need as well,” Gelsomino added.
“We believe health systems see our unique service offerings as a way to extend their reach to even more patients,” Dr. Mark Prather, CEO and co-founder of DispatchHealth, said.
