By Merin C. MacDonald
Point-of-care technology (POCT) and testing are increasingly important diagnostic and monitoring tools that provide physicians and patients access to rapid assessment and results for a variety of conditions. From at-home COVID-19 and blood glucose tests to small, handheld ultrasound units that can be used by physicians during physical exams, these technologies are changing the way health care is delivered and the patient’s overall experience.
Shiv Sutaria, MD, associate medical director of the UMass Memorial Health (UMMH) Hospital at Home (HAH) Program and assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine, was a key contributor to a recent study published in PLoS One on health care professionals’ perspectives on point-of-care technologies. The study, led by the Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies (CAPCaT), assessed attitudes toward benefits, concerns, characteristics, and development of POCTs from 2019 to 2021 and included a survey of 168 health care professionals that was conducted in late 2021 through early 2022. Results showed that most clinicians agreed that POCTs improve patient management and clinician confidence in decision-making. The team concurrently studied patients’ perspectives toward point-of-care testing and found that the majority of those surveyed reported positive impressions of POCTs for diagnosing and managing their health conditions. They also observed increasing familiarity and comfort with the use and interpretation of POCT results. “Our primary findings were that [providers and patients] are open to POCTs—there's trust—but questions remain regarding the cost to patients as well as reimbursement for the providers,” said Dr. Sutaria. “More research needs to be done to find out how we can make POCT more accessible, and understand what barriers there are to adoption of POCT. ”
Beyond his role in the POCT studies, Dr. Sutaria’s passion remains deeply rooted in his hospital-at-home work. He continues to champion the success of the UMMH HAH program and is proud of the many accomplishments achieved over a relatively short period since it launched in August 2021. As part of his work in the program, Dr. Sutaria has been involved in digital innovations and the development of tools that the emergency department uses to help identify patients who are appropriate for hospital-at-home. “We initially built this tool in-house to be used on the Epic platform,” said Dr. Sutaria. “Epic was so impressed by it, that they are going to release the tool, with permission, to other hospital-at-home programs across the country that use Epic.” The tool gathers discrete data points from the patient’s chart and yields a score that helps assess whether they are a good candidate for hospital-at-home care. Previously, this data was collected and assessed manually.
“We're looking forward to making even more process improvements in our patient acquisition process to see if we can ramp up our census, and continue making this one of the most successful [hospital-at-home] programs in the country,” said Dr. Sutaria.