HOME REMEDY

Program brings the hospital to the patients, where they live

BY ELLEN GILLETTE

Your elderly parent is in the hospital—anxious, alone. Medical personnel come and go. When you visit, you can’t stay long because of children at home. You wish you could do more.

Or hospitalized yourself, you worry whether your pets are a burden on the neighbors. Treated for one disease, you contract another — a hospital-acquired infection such as MRSA or C-diff 

— necessitating a longer stay.

What if you or your loved one could receive hospital-level care while enjoying the comfort, safety and tranquility of home? Thanks to Cleveland Clinic’s Hospital Care at Home [HCAH] program, that’s possible.

An alternative to brick-and-mortar hospital stays, this concierge service is an option for patients of Cleveland Clinic hospitals, in Indian River, Tradition, Martin North, Martin South and Weston, who meet eligibility criteria.

A donation from tech moguls Jon Rubinstein and his wife, Karen Richardson, was instrumental. Rubinstein described his interest in HCAH in a January Cleveland Clinic publication: “Not unlike the iPod enabled you to listen to music wherever you were, this latest set of technologies enables hospital-level care in your home environment, which [we] think is really cool.”