(This article was originally published in
Healthcare Call Center Times in December 2020.)
SAN DIEGO, CA—In our February 2019 issue, we carried a story “Connecting Right to a Nurse From Your Chest or Arm” that discussed the development of a tool by a San Diego-based company Homestead Health that enabled home health patients to have a direct connection to a nurse if they felt the need. NurseCaller™ is a device that patients can wear around their neck, on their arm, or attached to their clothing that allows instant communication with a nurse. It allows patients to call for assistance just by pressing a button and has its own phone number attached to it.
The way it works is that the home health agency purchases the device for $99 or less and provides it to the patient at no charge. The agency pays a low monthly service fee and once the patient is done with home health, it is the agency’s call to either repurpose the device for another patient or give it to the original patient for a monthly service fee that the patient pays.
At the time of our last story, the company was doing a pilot of its technology with Accessible Home Health Care of Houston. The home health agency provided a selected group of high risk clients the device at no charge. Sixty to 75 percent of the patients in the pilot used it to contact a nurse regarding a medical issue. The pilot was so successful that the NurseCaller was offered to the rest of this home health company’s franchises throughout the country, says Homestead Health’s Executive Director Thomas Franks. By the spring of 2020, about half of the franchises have come aboard, he adds.
The company is also a preferred provider for another home health franchise system and is working with a home health provider that has a contract with an insurer to handle their toughest multiple chronic condition members.
Franks says that the NurseCaller can have communications initiated by the patient and also by the nurse or other health provider representative. Patients can simply press their button and it goes straight to their home health company or whoever else has been deemed the right repository for the call. For example, after hours the call might go straight to a nurse call center.
On the other side, one thing the healthcare provider can do is contact the patient to confirm appointments. For example, in our last story, it was pointed out that one of the issues that home health companies have is in confirming appointments by phone. In some cases, the patient does not answer the phone and perhaps may not even be at home when the home health nurse comes by for the appointment. In another scenario, the home health agency may be calling to confirm a future appointment with the patient’s doctor. In either case, with the NurseCaller, the nurse or home health representative can get hold of the patient directly—the patient does not even need to pick up the call; rather the voice comes straight out of the device as soon as the call is made.
Franks says that these calls to patients can also incorporate wellness messages from the healthcare organization. That, in turn, suggests that it is not only home health providers that might benefit from a device such as this, but also health system call centers that are active in post discharge calling. That’s because one of the issues that call center nurses have in post discharge calling is simply getting hold of the patient by phone. In some cases there might be a wrong phone number or the patient just doesn’t answer the phone; in other cases the patient may want to answer the phone but can’t do it in time. With this device around the patient’s neck or arm and the ability to speak to the patient without them having to answer the call first, it might make this connection easier, he says.