Adding Lorien at Home’s Lorien Link telehealth monitoring service to an existing primary care system for seniors living at home cut their emergency department visits by 69 percent and significantly reduced hospital admissions and costs,according to a pilot program published by the MarylandHealth Care Commission.

The 18-month pilot program was funded in part by a $56,000 grant to GBMC affiliate Gilchrist Greater Living from the MHCC, which is testing the effectiveness of telehealth in many different health care settings. Gilchrist added the Lorien Link service to 20 of the 200 participants in the Gilchrist Support Our Elders program (SOE), which primarily serves home-bound, chronically ill seniors with multiple health conditions.

Among other things, the study found that adding Lorien Link:

• Reduced emergency-department visits by69 percent, compared to participants’ prior-year baseline;
• Reduced hospital admissions by 40 percent, and readmissions by 45 percent, even though all the participants were at moderate- to high-risk of hospital reentry when chosen for the study;
• Reduced unscheduled calls to the SOE program by about 18 percent; and
• Reduced the cost-per-patient metric by nearly $10,000 per year for participating patients.

Notably, the pilot program also achieved a patient-satisfaction rating of 95 percent. Patients “enjoyed being able to check their own readings at home with accurate equipment and knowing that a provider would be checking on them,” Gilchrist wrote in its report to the MHCC. Gilchristhas continued the study with funding from other sources.

Lorien at Home is the in-home service provider of Ellicott City-based Lorien Health Services, which operates 10 nursing home facilities in Maryland. The Lorien Link system uses a tablet and connected peripherals, like a blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, glucometer, scale and thermometer, to gather patient data.The system automatically alerts the patient’s care team if results are outside pre-determined levels.

“As an early adopter of telehealth technology, we were excited to be part of the Gilchrist study, and naturally we’re proud of the results,” said Lorien Health Services CEO Louis G. Grimmel Sr. “We’re also looking forward to using what we learned through this study to identify which patients benefit the most from telehealth monitoring and to fine-tune the processes we use to deliver those services.”

The MHCC’s March 2018 report is “Advancing Population Health and Primary Care Transformation via Telehealth: A Compilation of 2015 & 2016 Telehealth Grant Final Reports.” It is available here.

About Lorien Health Services

Lorien Health Services is a family owned nursing home company and industry innovator thatoperates 10 facilities in Baltimore, Carroll, Harford and Howard counties along with two additional services, Lorien at Home and Lorien Rehabilitation and Fitness, as anextension of the local community. Lorien believes in knowing itsneighbors, and designingfacilitiesand services tosupportthem.Lorienemploys more than2,200 Marylandersandstrivesto be the employer of choice while helping to sustain Maryland communities.For more information please visit: https://www.lorienhealth.com/maryland-senior-care/about-us/

Lorien at Home is the in-home service provider of Ellicott City-based Lorien at Home. Lorien at Home is a Level III Residential Services Agency, #R3551, by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Office of Health Care Quality.