Osceola County

Aug 18

As part of NLAPH’s first cohort during the 2012-2013 program year, Ken Peach and Team Osceola focused on connecting home-bound individuals within Osceola County, Florida to medical and health care services. At the beginning of the program, Team Osceola identified the community need for a program that would remove or mitigate barriers to health care access for home-bound individuals. With this program, the team hoped to reduce the number of unnecessary hospital readmissions for these individuals. Ken and the team developed Phone2Home, a program designed to have a medically trained individual accompany emergency responders on calls for home-bound individuals who would otherwise refuse medical transport to a health care facility. Phone2Home also prioritized the provisioning of culturally competent and health equity-oriented care through bilingual support for the large number of Spanish speaking communities within the county. Additionally, the team ensured that recipients of the program were able to request either a male or female provider to further increase comfort with the care rendered.

Team Osceola has continued to build out this work for over the past 8 years! Ken's role is to support the team in navigating financial, legal, and community engagement challenges that became apparent during the team’s program year. By continuing to engage with community partners, the team has had many successes in the subsequent years including collaborating with a congestive heart failure clinic which determined that the Phone2Home program saved the hospital $150,000 in readmission expenses. This prompted the team to consider ways to improve the program while ensuring financial sustainability. Looking back to their NLAPH experience, the team found the network map exercise to be a valuable resource, encouraging them to identify partners that could provide services to those receiving care—a valuable component of their continuing work.

Published June 5, 2023