Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Receives Health Care Innovation Award from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
$9.6 million in funding to pilot Mobile Acute Care Team program to substitute acute care at home for traditional inpatient services
Yesterday, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an award of more than $9.6 million for the Mobile Acute Care Team (MACT) program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which provides acute care services at patients’ homes rather than at the hospital. Shifting health care services to the home eliminates the higher cost of a hospital admission.
Under the MACT program, pending final approval, teams will provide hospital-level care for specific diagnoses at the patient’s home along with post-acute care for up to 30 days. This care will be provided through a joint collaboration between physicians from the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program and multiple community-based service providers, including Visiting Nurse Service of New York. The program will involve physicians, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, paramedics, physical, occupational and speech therapists, care coaches, and home health aides.
In addition, ancillary services will be provided, such as community-based radiology, lab services (including point of care testing), durable medical equipment, pharmacy and infusion services, telemedicine, and interdisciplinary post-acute care services. The team will ensure a safe transition for the patient from the Mount Sinai care team back to community providers, and provide referrals to support services, as needed.
“This funding is enormously important, and will help lay the foundation for a key element of innovative, population health care management and cost savings, going forward,” said Kenneth L. Davis, MD, CEO and President, Mount Sinai Health System.
“The MACT program will challenge the notion that the delivery of high-quality care for certain conditions is limited only to hospitals and specialty-based outpatient centers, rather than through team-based, community care, which we believe can have equal or better outcomes,” said Theresa Soriano, MD, MPH, Executive Director of the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program, one of the largest of its kind in the country and a leader in home-based primary care. “We are excited and confident that this project will highlight the expertise of home-based care professionals of all disciplines in managing the acute medical conditions of our patients in the comfort and safety of their own homes.”
The MACT program is geared toward patients enrolled in Medicare and /or Medicaid, and who have been diagnosed with one of the following acute medical conditions: congestive heart failure; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD] exacerbation; cellulitis; community-acquired pneumonia; diabetes; deep venous thrombophlebitis [DVT]; and urinary tract infection [UTI]. These conditions, collectively, account for approximately 20 percent of Medicare discharges from hospitals. Mount Sinai physicians expect that approximately 25 percent of these patients could be cared for under MACT.
“We are proud that CMS recognizes the ability of MACT to transform the clinical and financial health care model for individuals with these acute illnesses, and that we, as a health system, are demonstrating the viability of home health care as a cost-effective means of improving health outcomes,” said Albert Siu, MD, the Ellen and Howard C. Katz Chairman's Chair of the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “We are confident that the strength of the newly enlarged Mount Sinai Health System played a large role in strengthening our application for this award.”
The award marks the second time in two years that the Mount Sinai Health System has received awards through the CMS Health Care Innovation Awards. In the first round, Mount Sinai was awarded more than $12.7 million to establish its Geriatric Emergency Department Innovations in Care Program, also known as GEDI WISE, with a goal similar to that of MACT: improving patient outcomes while producing cost savings to Medicare.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.
As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.
Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.