Florida Retirement Community Adopts Telehealth as Linchpin of ACO
Stephen K. Klasko, M.D.The e-visit program is seen as a central primary care tool for The Villages Health system’s accountable care organization (ACO) initiative. “With the way that we’re working on The Villages accountable care organization, it will be the patient-centered medical homes, it will be the University [USF Health] as the specialist, it will be a private-label insurance company,” says Klasko. “It will be accountable care in the way of if we save $3 million, $1 million will go back to the insurance company, $1 million will go to the docs, and $1 million will go back into the community.”The e-visit partnership with American Well was signed last month and the infrastructure work and staffing will be completed this fall. The Villages Health system is currently interviewing a handful of insurers to partner with for its ACO initiative. The next step of the initiative will be developing a home health component, and the third stage will involve setting up biometric monitoring and allowing patients to send high-definition photos (i.e. a rash) to their specialists via the telehealth platform.The common myth that seniors do not embrace technology is something that Klasko seeks to dispel through this ACO initiative. According to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than half of adults age 65 and older are online, compared to just 15 percent in April 2000. Among Internet users ages 65 and older, 70 percent use the Internet on a typical day.USF Health recently received back 32,000 paper and online responses from its own public health survey that will give its researchers a baseline of health of the population, which will then provide information to make interventions to solve specific health problems. Some early findings show that the Villages have 2,800 clubs, many of them health-related (i.e. The Airheads club for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients). Klasko says this shows great community health awareness, which can serve The Villages Health system’s ACO purposes well.“The American Well relationship allows us for the first time to really be partners with the patients in healthcare,” concludes Klasko. “It allows [physicians] to get into the patients’ home at a level that we couldn’t before.”