1. Staying Out Of Hospitals May Pay Off
Gary Gonzales is hoping that New Mexico hos-
pitals will be willing to pay his company $8,800 a
month in order to save tens and even hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
Gonzales is the founder and CEO of Infinity Home
Healthcare, a two-month-old Albuquerque com-
pany that is hoping to use telemedicine and home
nursing visits to prevent Medicare patients from
returning to the hospital within 30 days of their
initial discharge.
The company, which is funded in part by the
telemedicine firm Net Medical Xpress Solutions
Inc., is offering hospitals an $8,800, 30-day package
that is designed to keep recently-discharged pa-
tients from returning to the hospital.The package
includes eight home visits by a nurse to a patient’s
home, a doctor’s visit via Net Medical Xpress’s
telemedicine platform and any diagnostic tests
that the patient needs.
“When a cardiac patient bounces back [is read-
mitted to a hospital] it can cost $4000,000 a week.
We can save a hospital from $16,00 to $400,000”by
preventing those bouncebacks. Gonzales said.
“A one-night hospital stay can cost $13,000.”
Gonzales, a nurse and critical care paramedic, said
he got the idea for forming Infinity after meeting
Net Medical Xpress CEO Dick Govatski.
“Dick asked me if I was interested in starting a
home health care company, and I said,‘I don’t
know what I can do for you; I’m a paramedic and a
nurse,’ and he said he had some ideas and would
help us with the technology side.”
Govatski said Infinity fits into Net Medical’s busi-
ness model by being able to offer home visits by
doctors vis the Internet to patients in rural New
Mexico. He didn’t disclose how much Net Medical
has put into the startup.
“Infinity will sign up patients and they will work
with the hospitals,”Govatski said.“Hospitals have
a readmission problem and those bouncebacks
are costing hospitals thousands and thousands
of dollars.They don’t want patients to come back
within 30 days and Infinity will have intensive care
unit nurses and flight nurses and emergency room
nurses and they will go into the homes of a patient
and they will go be able to talk to a doctor [via tele-
medicine] who can assess the issue with a nurse
about how bad the patient might be.”
Gonzales, who most recently worked at the Heart
Hospital of New Mexico al Lovelace Medical
Center, said Infinity has five nurses and four other
staffers and will be looking to add 25 to 50 more
employees in the near future if business takes off.
The firm is in talks with some insurers and local
governments for its services, Gonzales said.
Helping hospitals with their bounceback problem
is just one of three lines of services that Infinity
has. It offers patients who might be thinking of
going to the emergency room a $350 consultation
with a primary case doctor and a nurse, and it is
also hoping to contract with traditional insurance
companies.
“They can do an X-ray at the house, and the doctor
and the nurse visit, and if you need a prescription,
that’s all included without a patient having to go to
the emergency room,”Gonzales said.
Albuquerque’s two major hospital systems,
Lovelace Health Systems and Presbyterian Health-
care Services, have various programs to try and
keep discharged patients to try and keep recently
discharged patients from being readmitted to the
hospital. Gonzales said that even with those pro-
grams, Infinity has a place in the Market.
“We are not in competition with anybody. As the
nation grows, there are new doctors that are being
made, but not a lot of them. We don’t have enough
health care facilities and are trying to extend doc-
tor’s services,”Gonzales said.
New Company Puts
Emphasis On In-Home Care
If you need real time cardiac monitoring, an X-ray or
EKG at your home, Infinity Home Healthcare says it can
do those and other imaging. But the startup firm hasn’t
bought the vans and the mobile imaging equipment
required to provide those in-home services. Instead In-
finity contracts with two mobile imaging services in the
Albuquerque that provide those services, said Infinity
CEO Gary Gonzales.That will allow the two-month-old
firm to focus on the home nurse and telemedicine visits
it is offering to New Mexico hospitals and patients.
Gonzales said Infinity’s services to prevent hospital
readmissions go beyond what area hospitals, including
the Lovelace Health System network of hospitals and
Presbyterian Hospital can do to prevent those readmis-
sions.
BY DENNIS DOMRZALSKI | ALBUQUERQUE BUSINESS FIRST REPORTER
Gary Gonzales said he got the idea for his new company, Infinity Home Health
Care, after talking with Dick Govatski, the CEo of Net Medical Xpress
August 9. 2013 | ALBUQUERQUE BUSINESS FIRST www.albuquerquebusinessfirst.com
© 2013 ALBUQUERQUE BUSINESS FIRST
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