Home primary care provider MD at Home is ready to use its model across the country

While many home care providers have struggled with data collection, MD at Home sees data use as one of the pillars of its success.

The Chicago-based home based primary care provider has a proven track record of using clinical data to improve the lives of their patients.

This was announced by Ahmed Morsi, Director of Clinical Operations at MD at Home.

“We know about everything that happens to the patient using our data,” Morsi said in an interview with Home Health Care News. “Whether it’s developing a care plan, scheduling patients for providers, or coordinating communications with members of our care team, we use data in our daily work.”

The company also relies on data to help develop and build relationships with home healthcare providers, laboratories and other partners who provide supportive services.

MD at Home provides primary care to approximately 7,000 home-based patients in the Chicago area. It primarily serves low-income patients, most of whom are eligible for Medicare/Medicaid.

For more than a decade, MD at Home has been working to provide quality home care to vulnerable patients, with the primary goal of reducing hospital admissions to hospitals and other conventional facilities.

This year, the company expands outside of Chicago for the first time.

“Over the next 12 months, we will be in Florida,” Morsi said. “The need exists in some parts of the country, such as Florida. [Specifically], we have heard that there is a need for methods similar to ours: providers that use data, apply population health and are patient-centric. We studied the markets and realized that Florida was our best first stop and our launch pad for more national expansion.”

Morsi added that by building strong relationships with partners and maintaining an open dialogue, MD at Home was able to carefully consider where to expand first.

“With our relationship in this community, we have been approached by various organizations asking us to expand wherever they are,” he said. “We saw national expansion as part of our future and we felt it was time to do it based on the need we see.”

As MD at Home expands, one of the challenges that needs to be addressed is the lack of resources for the patients it serves.

For example, behavioral health and other specialty services are areas that MD at Home has focused on over the past few years.

“There is a significant lack of resources in these communities, which manifests itself when you need specialists who come to the patient’s home,” Morsi said. “Psychology, psychiatry and behavioral health are the biggest needs of these patients. And it goes without saying that recruitment continues to be a challenge for us and the industry as a whole.”

MD at Home has actually managed to avoid some of the worst staff shortages caused by the public health emergency. Morsi said he did this by being a trusted partner to the agencies that depended on him.

“I think we kind of transcended that by having great communication with the home care agencies we work with and using the data we collect and sharing it with our partners,” he said. “It helped us to be innovative and reliable.”

Looking ahead, Morsi believes that educating the public about the need for home-based primary care provides an excellent opportunity.

“Educating payers on the importance of providing primary health care at home [is big],” he said. “By using us and what we can do for home care agencies, it helps them care for these patients and reduce some of the burden they have on the facility side. That way, these facilities can focus in more acute cases.