Best Buy Pushes Deeper Into Healthcare With ‘Hospital At Home’ Partnership

Best Buy is partnering with a large U.S. healthcare system to develop “new hospital at home offerings,” pushing deeper into developing new healthcare services and products.

Best Buy Health disclosed Tuesday a partnership with Atrium Health, which is part of one of the nation’s largest hospital operators, to improve the delivery of “hospital-level care in the home.” Atrium in December closed on its merger with Advocate Aurora Health to form Advocate Health, the nation’s fifth-largest healthcare system, which operates 67 hospitals and more than 1,000 sites of care across six states.

“The goal of the partnership is to enable providers to deliver high-quality care to patients in the comfort of their own homes, while helping reduce emotional and financial burdens on patients and caregivers,” the companies said.

Best Buy said the partnership will leverage Atrium Health’s expertise as a provider of telehealth services that includes a “well-established hospital at home program.” Based in Charlotte, N.C., Atrium first launched its hospital at home program in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic as “a means to address patient surges.” Since then, Atrium said it has “evolved the program to be able to care for such conditions as cardiac, COPD, pneumonia, asthma, various infections and other medical and post-operative conditions.”

Meanwhile, the retailer said its Best Buy Health unit will work to improve patient education and “enabling technology in the home with the help of specially trained Geek Squad Agents to assist with logistics and technical support.”

It’s the latest push into healthcare services and products for Best Buy. Last year, Best Buy introduced sales of hearing aids as part of what it called a “new experience for hearing devices” that included an expanded collection of such devices as well as “an in-store experience in more than 300 stores, and a new online hearing assessment tool.” And in 2021, Best Buy acquired Current Health, a technology platform that includes remote patient monitoring.

“Best Buy Health enables care at home for everyone by leveraging its strengths from the Best Buy enterprise and focusing on three key areas: wellness at home, aging at home and care at home,” said Deborah Di Sanzo, president of Best Buy Health.

With the partnership with Atrium Health, Best Buy finds itself entering a hospital care at home area with much more established partners with broader reach, offering their hospital care at home programs across the U.S.

Boston-based technology company Medically Home, for example, last year landed an investment of more than $100 million from medical product giant Baxter International, Cardinal Health and Global Medical Response to advance a new healthcare delivery model that delivers “advanced care” typically available inside a hospital into patient homes. Medically Home’s platform is used in 20 states, working with healthcare systems including the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente.

Neither Best Buy nor Atrium Health would disclose financial terms of their partnership but those involved said there will be more investments with the idea to scale it beyond the system.

“We combine our omnichannel, geek squad, caring centers, and Current Health services to enable care,” Di Sanzo said. “At scale, no other company has the holistic combination of resources that when combined, will change the lives of consumers and enable them to heal right in their own home surrounding by the people and things they love the most. Those strengths, combined with Atrium Health’s extensive clinical expertise and deep experience leading in virtual care, will help us improve and enable care in the home for everyone.”