Halamka Describes Mayo Clinic’s Approach to Hospital at Home

As Mayo Clinic rolls out its hospital-at-home program in Arizona, John Halamka, M.D., president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, described the organization’s experience creating a centralized command center and scaling up the service.

Speaking at a panel session at the recent Tech Forum of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, Halamka said Mayo Clinic has worked through practical issues around making hospital at home a reality. For instance, what is the user experience like? What is the redundancy and disaster recovery? What is the provider experience? And how do you integrate all of these components into work flow?

Early in 2020, Mayo Clinic asked how it could take serious and complex care Mayo quality care with Mayo safety and Mayo outcomes and move it to non-traditional settings, Halamka said. “Of course, a lot of logistical questions had to be asked: How do you organize to do that? Do you have a single command center for the country? Who staffs it? What's the division of labor between specialists, nurses, supply chain experts, community paramedics?”