Well Beyond Medicine: The Nemours Children's Health Podcast · Nemours Children's Health

Ep. 186: Advanced Care at Home: Healing Where Kids Heal Best

·32 min·2 clips

Nemours built a 24-7 clinical operations center in Jacksonville to support kids at home.

1. Well Beyond Medicine: The Nemours Children's Health Podcast centers this episode on Nemours' advanced care-at-home program for children. 2. Carol Vassar speaks with Jane Miracle, Nemours' Executive Vice President, Enterprise Chief Nursing Executive, and Chief Patient Operations Officer, and Christopher Beattie, Vice President of Operational Innovation. 3. The episode asks what hospital-level pediatric care looks like when Nemours delivers it in a child's home instead of inside hospital walls. 4. Chris says the program is a virtually based, technology-enabled model run from Nemours' 24-7 clinical operations center in Jacksonville. 5. He explains that nurses triage family calls and escalate issues through specific workflows based on the child's needs. 6. Jane says the goal is to optimize the family experience, decrease the burden of hospitalization, and bridge the vulnerable transition from discharge to home. 7. Chris says the program helps kids get out of the health system sooner when they are medically stable but still need support. 8. Both guests say the model is meant to prevent unnecessary emergency department visits and readmissions. 9. Chris notes that Nemours did not try to rethink hospitalization because hospitals are unnecessary. 10. He says the real problem is what happens around hospitalization, especially the gap between discharge and stability. 11. Jane says the team previously worked on virtual nursing and AI cameras inside the hospital before extending that work into the home. 12. She describes that transition as 'innovation begetting innovation' and says the team started with proof-of-concept pilots before moving quickly. 13. Chris explains that the program is not a classic 'hospital at home' model because standalone pediatric hospitals do not qualify for the CMS conditions of participation waiver. 14. He says that pushed Nemours to build an outpatient-based model from the ground up. 15. Jane says nurses, physicians, IT staff, and families helped design the platform from the beginning. 16. She shares that families tested early visits and gave feedback about what felt reassuring and what pushed them toward the emergency department in the past. 17. Jane lists examples of patients served, including NICU babies near discharge, adolescents after spinal surgery, and children with oxygen, feeding tubes, or home ventilation. 18. Chris says the model can adapt to many needs because the team is 'the constant' for families and outside support teams. 19. The episode has an interview style with detailed back-and-forth questions from Carol Vassar and clear, practical answers from both leaders. 20. Listeners interested in pediatric operations, nursing leadership, and home-based care would likely stay engaged, while listeners wanting a case study focused on adult hospital-at-home models might skip it.

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