PHILADELPHIA – Forty-nine percent of hospice patients have a diagnosis of cancer, whereas only 11 percent have a primary diagnosis of heart failure. Despite the fact that heart failure affects nearly six million people in the U.S., these patients rarely receive hospice care compared to patients with other conditions.

Penn Medicine’s Innovation Accelerator Program, now in its fifth year, has announced funding for four new projects aimed at addressing this and other disparities to improve health care delivery and patient outcomes. The program, operated by the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation, supports proposals from University of Pennsylvania Health System faculty and staff, based on their insights into opportunities to achieve high value care. This is the second year the Accelerator has been co-sponsored by UnitedHealthcare. A record 104 applications were received for this year’s program.

“The Accelerator Program embodies the Penn Medicine culture of a continuously learning health system,” said David A. Asch, MD, MBA, executive director of the Center for Health Care Innovation. “The emphasis is on turning insights into action by finding out what works in the winning projects, fine-tuning when necessary, and testing for effectiveness. We want every contact with every patient to be an opportunity to learn how to treat the next patient even better. At all times, we strive to ensure that the entrepreneurial frame-of-mind remains at the forefront.”
The four newly funded projects are:

Moving assessment of post-discharge needs to the home setting for older adult patients: Older, medically-stable hospitalized adults are usually discharged only after post-discharge care has been organized. But this often causes patients to remain in the hospital longer than medically necessary while waiting for services to be arranged. This delay can compromise patient safety (infection, falls) and overall health status (impaired cognition and function), leading to increased hospital cost (longer length of stay, cost of caring for adverse events, and readmissions). This project will test a transitional care model with strong prior evidence of improved outcomes that moves patients home sooner, with appropriate care and support for ensuring safety upon earlier discharge. Team lead: Rebecca Trotta, PhD, RN, director of Nursing Research and Science

Reimagining primary care doctor ‘visits’ and payment models with telemedicine: Studies have shown that telemedicine video visits can increase care-provider capacity, improve patient satisfaction, and reduce costs. This project will test algorithms assessing appropriateness for remote care, tools and infrastructure required for efficient care and payment models promoting increased access. The goal is to determine how patient-evaluation and management services can best be completed through video visits – for the benefit of patients, clinicians and payers – while establishing a sustainable business model. Team lead: Janice Hillman, MD, adolescent and young adult medicine, Penn Medicine at Radnor

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