Tampa General Hospital aims to help cancer patients avoid trips to ER

With Tampa General Hospital serving a wide area of Florida, the health system is working to help patients avoid long trips to the emergency room.

The health system is particularly focused on helping patients battling cancer avoid a trip to the hospital when it’s not necessary.

Late last year, Tampa General announced a partnership with Reimagine Care, a healthcare technology company based in Nashville, to extend more services and help to cancer patients. Using an AI-powered platform, Reimagine Care connects with patients and helps them see if their symptoms can be managed without a trip to the hospital, and also if they should get to the emergency department right away.

Understandably, a patient battling cancer who isn’t feeling well may feel as if the right thing to do is get to the hospital right away. But reducing unnecessary trips is better for patients, says Elisabeth King, vice president of operations at the Tampa General Hospital Cancer Institute.

About half of cancer patients end up visiting the emergency room in their first year of treatment, she says.

“Florida is a big state. And so having people drive all the way in for care can be challenging, especially when somebody is not feeling well,” King says. “I think this really gives an opportunity for us to provide really high quality cancer care and symptom management at home.”

In addition, a trip to the emergency room can mean exposure to others who are sick, which poses risks for patients with cancer who have suppressed immune systems.

Florida continues to see population growth, especially as the Sunshine State is a popular retirement destination, and more patients with cancer. The American Cancer Society projects 183,000 new cancer cases will be reported in Florida in 2026.

Available at all hours

Reimagine Care has teamed with several other health systems, including City of Hope, Memorial Hermann, and the University of Colorado, among others. The company offers virtual care and AI assistance around the clock.

Patients initially connect with an AI agent, named “Remi,” which fields some questions and offers answers via text. If the patient needs more assistance, the agent connects the patients with Reimagine Care’s remote team of nurses trained in oncology.

Dan Nardi, CEO of Reimagine Care, says patients can get virtual assistance around the clock.

“We're able to be there initially answering questions, giving them confidence in their care so that they don't feel like the ED is the only outlet for them,” Nardi says.

Nardi says some of the heavy lifting is done by Remi, the virtual assistant, answering questions within seconds. Since it’s a text-based solution, it’s easy for patients to use and the company sees high engagement rates, Nardi says. But if patients need more help than ‘Remi’ can provide, they are talking to nurses within minutes, he says.

Part of the goal is also helping patients before problems escalate. King says some patients don’t reach out with questions or calls for assistance until their condition worsens to the point that an ER visit is necessary.

She recalls one cancer patient who began experiencing nausea and a low-grade fever on a Friday night. The patient began vomiting over the weekend and couldn’t hold down food. By Monday morning, she was dehydrated and had to go to the emergency room and needed to be readmitted.

“We see patients who don't call us until their symptoms really are unmanageable,” King says. “And so I think the technology aspect that Reimagined Care offers is really exciting.”

While much of the goal is to avoid trips to the ER that can be avoided, King and Nardi say the partnership can also help identify patients who should get to the hospital sooner and shouldn’t try to just manage on their own.

“Cancer requires different care,” King says. “And so having this kind of quick, immediate access to these really knowledgeable clinicians, I think will really make a difference in outcomes.”

Nardi says the goal is to “guide patients to that right level of care quickly.”

“We're compressing that whole triage timeline …. we're compressing it to get them to that right level of care in the right moment,” he says. “And that's really the big value. We're just applying technology with Remi to do a lot of that at a more efficient level, and at a lower cost point for the entire healthcare delivery system.”

Helping staff

Nardi also says the company is able to ease the workload of Tampa General physicians in fielding calls from patients.

“Because of that nature of our care, being proactive and reactive, we're also able to relieve the Tampa General providers and clinical care team of some of that extra workload and hopefully help make their lives easier, better, and higher quality,” he says.

While King says the ultimate goal is to improve care for cancer patients, Tampa General is also hoping that the partnership with Reimagine Care will reduce some of the demands on doctors.

“We're hoping to see a reduction in what we call pajama time, which are the hours spent replying to inbox messages and coordinating patient care after hours and on weekends,” King says. “So we expect that Remagine Care is really going to free up time for our physicians at nights and on the weekends.”