A common challenge in infectious diseases (ID) patient care isn’t the quality of inpatient treatment – it’s what happens after the patient leaves the hospital.
Hospital leaders often worry that patients on IV antibiotics won’t complete their treatment or won’t receive the follow-up support they need, which can lead to readmissions, complications, and added costs.
Tele-OPAT (tele-Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy) improves the continuum of care by bridging the gap between inpatient and outpatient settings, ensuring that patients receiving IV antibiotics outside the hospital continue to get high-quality, coordinated care.
When you combine a robust inpatient infectious diseases telemedicine program with tele-OPAT, your hospital benefits from:
Improved Continuum of Care
Tele-OPAT enables ID physicians, pharmacists, and OPAT nurses to monitor patients remotely after discharge, ensuring that their treatment plan started in the hospital continues without interruption.
Cost-Effective Care
By transitioning eligible patients to tele-OPAT, hospitals can reduce length of stay (LOS), improve care efficiency, and better allocate resources. Remote monitoring through tele-OPAT minimizes unnecessary in-hospital consults, reduces demand on support staff, and frees up physical space, helping your hospital cut excess costs while maintaining high-quality care.
Reduced Readmission Rates
Ongoing remote monitoring helps detect complications, side effects, or non-adherence early, allowing ID physicians to intervene before issues arise, leading to readmissions.
In 2020, our experts, along with colleagues at UPMC, reported in a peer-reviewed study that patients discharged on IV antibiotics who were managed via a Tele-OPAT service in an outpatient clinic had lower readmission rates than those who were seen by non-ID physicians or who had no outpatient follow-up.
Enhanced Patient Satisfaction
With tele-OPAT, patients can recover comfortably at home while receiving expert care.
At ID Connect partner site UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center (UNM SRMC), patients previously traveled over 3 hours twice a week for in-person follow-ups, creating significant time and financial burdens. Now, with remote monitoring and as-needed virtual visits, tele-OPAT eliminates unnecessary travel and streamlines follow-up care.
Tele-OPAT is more than an extension of inpatient care, it’s a transformative model that improves the continuum of care, lowers costs, and enhances patient satisfaction.
This flexible, patient-centered approach soon won’t just be a “nice to have,” it will become the standard of care for post-discharge infectious diseases management.
As a pioneer in tele-OPAT, Infectious Disease Connect is the trusted partner hospitals rely on to not just meet – but exceed – their clinical and financial goals.
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