Aetna Better Health of Illinois, one of the insurer's Medicaid plans, will test the effect of providing smartphones to home care aides who assist Illinois residents under the state's Integrated Care Program.
The pilot study with Addus Home Care, a national provider of home and community-based services, aims to demonstrate the benefits of smartphones to help home care aides report changing health conditions of members in real time to supervisors and to the patients' primary care physicians, Aetna said in a news release.
The aides are in these consumers' homes on a frequent basis performing duties that enable them to live at home but also observing changes in the physical, mental and environmental conditions of their clients. Illinois established the Integrated Care Program for older adults and adults with disabilities who are eligible for Medicaid to coordinate services across the continuum, help prevent unnecessary hospitalizations and to better manage chronic conditions.
Aetna Better Health and Addus Home Care administer the program, which operates in several counties with 18,000 members. Providing services to at-risk older adults has been found to reduce overall nursing home utilization and has helped to control Illinois' long-term care spending.
The ability to communicate changes in the participant's condition in real time allows for early identification and intervention by health plan case managers, said Mark Heaney, president and CEO of Addus. "Through the mobile device, we can really put the home care aide on the healthcare team," he said in the release.
In the pilot, Aetna and Addus also plan to use home and community-based services to demonstrate similar results with emergency and acute care services and will conduct an outcome study on the program this year.