Recovery after surgery or major surgery can be a challenging and sometimes fragmented process. A company is trying to change this situation with an application designed to personalize recovery after discharge.
Launched on Wednesday, Laguna Health The app provides patients with educational materials, customized rehabilitation plans, and virtual visits to the nursing team. Their goal is to improve the recovery process and reduce the risk of readmission, which is usually a high price for providers.
Re-admission within one month after discharge not only indicates poor results, but also pushes up costs. Therefore, the shift to value-based care includes reducing the overall effort for readmissions.In fact, through its Reduce readmission plan, The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services punishes hospitals with too high a readmission rate. In fiscal 2021, Medicare Cut payment to 2,545 hospitals.
This may help arouse the interest of the provider in the Laguna Health app.In fact, located in Evanston, Illinois North Shore University Health System It is working with the company to test the tool through clinical trials.
This application is the next step in the development of Laguna Health. The company’s CEO Yoni Shtein said that about six months ago, the company launched a browser-based network solution that only provides basic telemedicine services. On the other hand, the new application provides more digital features to attract patients.
“Previously it was mainly human-driven interaction, but now it is mainly digital interaction. If you want, you can adjust your support up and down with the help of the coach. [or] Yes,” Stein said in a telephone interview.
The application obtains two core instruction sets from the supplier. The first is the discharge summary, and the second is the discharge summary, which is a document sent to the doctor in charge of following up the patient. The app breaks down the instructions in the two abstracts into steps that the patient can follow.
In addition, patients can use the app to chat with their care team and behavioral health experts or make video interviews, and they will provide emotional support during the recovery process.
“[The app] Dr. Mark Lambert, deputy director of the Department of Cardiology of the North Shore University Health System, said in a telephone interview. “Not every patient is the same. Some patients need more, some patients need less.”
The health system has already conducted clinical trials on the browser-based solution previously launched by Laguna Health, and will now upgrade the trial to focus on the application. NorthShore will work with the company to continue to improve its tools and provide feedback to developers.
Currently, the focus of the trial is on cardiovascular disease. But Lambert believes this concept can be applied to other situations, including long-term Covid.
The researchers plan to include more than 700 patients in the trial, which will end by the end of this year. Shtein said that so far, about 212 people have participated, and the readmission rate has dropped by about 75% for those patients who cooperated with Laguna Health on the rehabilitation journey.
Based on the trial results, NorthShore will decide whether to deploy the application system-wide.
While experimenting, the company is moving towards commercialization.
Laguna Health faces fierce competition from medical navigation companies such as Accolade and Grand Rounds, and digital health companies such as Hinge Health and Livongo. However, Shtein believes that the company will find a place in the market because it focuses on the entire recovery phase (which usually takes several months) and checks the recovery demand under various conditions.
Laguna Health proposed $6.6 million in seed funding Come back in May. Shtein said it plans to raise another round of funding later this year to advance commercialization and expand R&D and clinical teams.
Photo Credit: AJ_Watt, Getty Images, Laguna Health
