Blessing Hospital’s ‘Hospital from Home’ service featured at international healthcare conference

QUINCY — Blessing Hospital’s “Hospital from Home” program was featured at the recent Hospital at Home World Congress in Vienna, Austria.

Through a combination of home visits, telemedicine and sophisticated monitoring technology, Blessing’s program provides hospital-level care in the homes of Medicare patients with select conditions who live within 60 minutes of Blessing Hospital.

The conference was the fifth and largest meeting to date for this international group, with 800 healthcare professionals from around the world gathering to collaborate and celebrate successes in providing hospital-level care in patients’ homes.

From the hundreds of abstracts for conference presentations received by organizers, 15 were selected for live presentation, including Blessing Hospital’s, presented by Dr. Mary Frances Barthel, vice president and chief medical information officer, Blessing Health System. Blessing’s program data was included in a poster presentation created by Joni Hull, a registered nurse at Blessing Hospital.

“It was an exceptional experience to discuss challenges and successes of hospital from home programs with people from around the world,” Barthel said in a press release. “I’m extremely proud of Blessing Health System and the work done to provide this alternate care model to our communities.”

Barthel said she learned at the conference about the complexity of conditions being treated by international hospitals from home programs, including post-surgical and cancer patients needing chemotherapy, those requiring blood transfusions and dialysis and palliative care patients.

“We continue to learn and grow with the program. As we become more comfortable with our ability to treat patients safely, it will be natural to expand our care to include more complex conditions,” she said.

Barthel added that Blessing continues to develop a mobile and telehealth strategy that will provide the foundation to expand its Hospital from Home program.

Blessing Hospital participated in 2022 in a randomized control trial with the Harvard School of Public Health to study implementation of the hospital-at-home care model in a rural setting.

“It is the only research study of its kind in the world to our knowledge,” Barthel said.

Upon completing the trial in 2024, Blessing continued its Hospital from Home program. More than 300 patients since have been cared for in their homes. Barthel reports the program earns high patient and provider satisfaction, and quality and safety outcomes equivalent to — or better than — the care delivered within the hospital.