Clinical care in the home and population health management: improving the care of patients with long-term health conditions

Abstract

Clinical care in the home, utilized, administered and evaluated in terms of its clinical and economic outcomes within a population health management system, can help patients with long term conditions (LTCs) live healthier lives while reducing the costs of care across the system. This model, through the avoidance of emergency hospital admissions, reducing the need for hospitalisation to treat progressive illnesses and activating and empowering patients, supporting good primary care, ensuring continuity of care and providing on-going emotional, psychological and practical support, can greatly increase the overall significance and efficiency of clinical care in the home, delivered as part of a population health management delivery system. This article argues strongly for the innate superiority of home-based care approaches within the modern era, actively recommending such approaches for the good of individual patients and an integrity of the general clinical system. We present hard evidence for the durability of our approach in both clinical and economic terms and advance to the reader the merits thereof.