By: Jamie Barrutia, Head of Marketing, myLaurel
Anyone who has spent hours waiting in a Brooklyn emergency room, or needed a hospital bed that never opened up, likely knows the problem: New York’s hospitals are busy, and getting busier. But a shift already underway is changing what getting care looks like for patients across the city. That shift starts with the idea that hospital-level care doesn’t have to happen inside a hospital’s four walls.
What This Means For Patients
Many New York hospitals have launched, or are launching, programs that allow eligible patients to receive the same quality of care at home as they would receive in the hospital. Brooklyn’s largest healthcare system and one of the nation’s largest independent teaching hospitals serves one of the most diverse patient populations in the country and has partnered with myLaurel, an organization that delivers acute and transitional care in the patient’s home. This type of partnership means patients who would have stayed in the hospital for days can now recover safely at home, under the care of a full clinical team both in person and virtually.
In many cases, patients can leave the hospital earlier, continue their recovery at home, and avoid repeated hospital visits. For New Yorkers who are cared for at home, it means sleeping in their own bed, eating their own food, and following their own schedule all while receiving high-quality care in the comfort of home.
What It Looks Like
Being discharged home with myLaurel feels a lot like simply going home, because that is exactly what patients are doing. What changes is where their care is delivered.
Once a patient leaves the hospital, myLaurel clinicians bring the medications, equipment, and diagnostic tools needed to continue care directly to the home, backed by a virtual team of physicians and nurses providing clinical oversight around the clock. If new or worsening symptoms arise, that same team can respond in the home, 365 days a year, to evaluate and treat the patient and help avoid a return trip to the hospital.
The myLaurel team also educates patients and caregivers on what to expect and how to manage recovery at home, and coordinates the wider transition back to ongoing care, arranging primary care and specialist follow-up, home health referrals, transportation, and delivery of medical equipment along the way. Care follows the patient home, instead of the other way around.
What The Numbers Show
myLaurel supports Brooklyn-area patients in two distinct ways. For patients who are medically ready to leave the hospital sooner, dedicated length-of-stay (LOS) coordination enables earlier, safer discharges, freeing up hospital capacity and saving 2.29 bed days per patient. And for patients at risk of returning after a hospital stay, close, at-home follow-up has helped drive a 43% reduction in readmissions among general medicine patients in the program’s first year with one hospital, translating to more than 1,000 unnecessary readmissions avoided.
“Our programs in New York serve patients who represent a higher-acuity population than the average general medicine patient, as reflected by their higher case mix index (CMI), indicating they were at greater risk for readmission at baseline,” noted Jamie Babcock, ANP-C, myLaurel’s Chief Clinical Officer. “We’ve seen great success in reducing readmissions among general medicine patients, helping more patients recover safely at home and avoiding return hospitalizations.”
The program has been particularly successful for Brooklyn’s frail, elderly, and medically complex patients by providing advanced medical care at home through a multidisciplinary team.
“What makes this program so impactful is that we are not simply moving care from the hospital into the home; we are delivering a highly coordinated, clinically integrated model designed around the needs of medically complex patients,” said Babcock. “Through timely clinical intervention, close follow-up, and strong collaboration between the health system, health plans, and myLaurel teams, we have helped patients recover safely at home. These results demonstrate what is possible when clinical innovation is paired with disciplined execution and a shared commitment to patient-centered care.”
What Patients Are Saying
Patient feedback suggests many prefer recovering at home in programs like this one. Patients in the Brooklyn partnership report high satisfaction with the program and say they would recommend it to others.
Brooklynites aren’t alone in that response. myLaurel reports similarly strong patient feedback across the other markets it serves.
Patients aren’t just tolerating care at home; they are actively seeking it as an alternative to the hospital, and increasingly asking whether these programs are available to them.
“Our programs enable many complex patients to recover at home,” said Jon Branche, myLaurel’s Chief Growth Officer. “The vast majority of patients tell us they would rather recover at home than in the hospital.”
Why It Matters Now
New York’s hospitals aren’t going to get less busy. That’s especially true during cold and flu season, when emergency rooms fill fastest, and safely moving stable patients home can relieve pressure across the whole system. New York already has about 4.8 million residents age 60 and older, a figure the state’s Master Plan for Aging expects to reach 5.3 million by 2030. As the population ages and needs more complex care, hospitals are at an inflection point and must find ways to care for people outside the hospital, through more community-based capacity.
But that doesn’t have to mean patients get less care, or less comfortable care. Partnerships like these with myLaurel point to a change in where care happens, and for a growing number of New Yorkers, the place they recover is starting to look a lot like home.
Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Individuals should consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding their specific medical needs and treatment options.
