Today, we answer a question about iCARE and cost savings. As so often is the case, when we focus on quality care first, the savings follow.

Here, we explain how.

If you have a question, comment or suggestion, we’re listening and we encourage you to email us what’s on your mind.

Today’s answered question

Q: Could you please discuss the cost savings produced from the newly implemented Care Management and iCARE models at VGH?

A: We’ll certainly do our best. In Vancouver, we began implementing iCARE — a standardized care-planning methodology — in 2010. Since then, we’ve integrated iCARE with ITH (Ideal Transition Home) to enhance the patient’s overall journey from admission to discharge — and beyond. This award-winning integrated model is used across all Vancouver medicine units, and we’re near completing rollout across surgical units, most recently in neurosciences and in the new year on tower 8 and 9 of Jim Pattison Pavilion.

We should point out that while iCARE and ITH produce savings benefits, this isn’t the first or even sole reason we’ve adopted them. Our primary aim — consistent with our True North goals — is to provide best care. By reducing delays, eliminating barriers and improving transitions to community care, we’re helping patients resume their lives in the comfort of familiar surroundings, while providing the kind of quality care and service we take pride in delivering. And, as former patient Rose Lachance explains in this video, home is where patients generally prefer to be. It’s also safer.

With the appropriate community supports, home is the best place for frail, elderly patients to recover and manage chronic conditions. Unnecessary admissions to hospital place these patients at risk for life-threatening infections and falls, and admission often diminishes their strength and independence. With this in mind we launched iCARE in the VGH Emergency Department (ED) earlier this year. Together with our Community partners, the ED has since reduced its number of in-hospital admissions for the “over 70” patient population an average of 2 patients per day, easing ED congestion and freeing much-needed hospital beds for patients who need them.

These savings supplement the overall reduction in average length of stay (ALOS) accomplished through iCARE and ITH across the larger system. By reducing our ALOS we’ve freed the equivalent of 24 beds per day and increased our capacity to provide care within our budget — just one of many examples of how we’re innovating to achieve sustainability, another True North goal.

For more background on iCARE and ITH, we suggest visiting VCH Connect here. If we haven’t quite answered your question, please don’t hesitate to let us know.