Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center located in North Carolina and Gentiva Health Services have created a joint venture to provide home healthcare by bringing together two national leaders in aging care and rehabilitation in North Carolina.
The joint venture called “Wake Forest Baptist Health Care at Home” is a new partnership that focuses on providing a more complete program dealing with post hospital solutions for older adults and also adult patients of all ages with complex health problems.
The joint venture care at home program will offer technological innovation, enhanced clinical training, and social outreach programs to reduce costly readmissions and costs while delivering a high level of care.
The “Health Care at Home” program combines 25 years of evidence-based research conducted at Wake Forest Baptist’s Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation. Gentiva has a proven track record in providing home healthcare and operates in more than 400 locations nationally including 33 in North Carolina.
Pamela E. Duncan, P.T. PhD., Professor of Neurology and Director of Transitional Outcomes at the Medical Center, said, “The partnership will provide better care for patients and is an example of how industry and academia can come together to promote healthcare improvements.
She added, “We were looking for a partner where we could re-engineer the care provided to our patients when they are discharged to home and then implement a new model drawn from the best practices along with the most recent research evidence.”
“One of the major differences in this care model is the integration of physician leadership to provide continuity in overseeing each patient’s journey from the hospital to their home by helping to manage the more complex, acute patients in partnership with home health professionals until their primary care team can resume care,” said Jeff Williamson, M.D., Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Clinical Director of the Sticht Center.
David Causby, President of Gentiva’s Home Health Division views his company as the ideal provider for this kind of program because we see this partnership as a platform to demonstrate many of the concepts we have been advocating to provide better care to the nation’s aging population.”