Building on its advance into the home health category, Best Buy Health and Geisinger announced they will expand their work together to bring a better level of care to more patients within the Geisinger network. This comes following Best Buy’s announcement earlier this year that it would be using its Geek Squad services to deliver in-home healthcare for low-risk patients.

We have been covering Best Buy’s transition into the home health sector a while at this point. Personally it comes as a point of fascination: one of the last standing home electronics retailers diversifying into home health technology. It’s also a good marker as to where home technology might be moving in the future, potentially hinting at how integration services may expand.

It’s no secret that Best Buy has been struggling with its home electronic sales since the pandemic. However, this trend of tech names moving into healthcare is one that’s not isolated to the consumer channel. Just this past year, the pro channel saw its own high-profile move when Masimo bought out Sound United (which itself was officially rebranded to Masimo Consumer earlier this year).

The broadening of Best Buy’s home health services comes following what the company refers to as considerable success following its partnership with Geisinger back in 2022.

For those unaware, Geisinger comprises a broad network of doctors, care facilities, schools, patients and researchers all focused in the medical field. Beginning in July 2022, Best Buy Health and Geisinger began deploying specially trained Geek Squad Agents to deliver, install and activate these remote care management devices in a program that now involves 300 Geisinger patients.

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While in the home, Agents educate patients on the technology in their care plan, answer questions about the devices, explain how to use them properly and ensure they are transmitting data back to the patient’s care team via Geisinger’s ConnectedCare365 chronic care management platform.

Agents also remain on standby to help with troubleshooting as needed and to collect and process all devices once the patient is discharged from the program by their care team. 

According to Best Buy, the results of the program so far have shown:

• 50% reduction in the time from admission into the chronic care at home program to when device set up is completed and the Geisinger care team can begin monitoring the patient remotely. This is a reduction from an average of 96 hours to 48 hours.
• 19% improvement in how well patients follow their care plans by wearing and using their remote technology equipment more consistently.
• 18% reduction in technical issues reported.

Patients also reportedly had overwhelmingly positive feedback, driving a world-class NPS score of 89 when asked about their experience with Geek Squad visiting the home to get them set up on their chronic care at home program.

“Health care is changing rapidly, and with those changes we are more focused than ever on moving care closer to our patients and members while simultaneously setting new standards for the quality of care they deserve,” said Karen Murphy, executive vice president, chief innovation officer and founding director of the Steele Institute for Health Innovation at Geisinger.

The end goal, according to Best Buy, is to find how advanced technology and logistics services can best be leveraged to find better ways chronic diseases can be managed without costly hospital visits.

Success is always good to hear, but what this might entail for integrators and others working in the home tech category can only be guessed at. Could integrators one day form partnerships with local hospitals to install and manage home health devices as part of their business? It’s certainly not out of the question given some other unique business models we’ve seen over the years at CE Pro. It’s also not out of the question when news of Masimo expanding Denon’s HEOS platform to include healthcare data occasionally crops up.

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