As the School of Nursing winds up its centennial, we profile ten alums who are making a difference.
By Dylan Walsh ’11MEM | Sep/Oct 2024
Joseph McDonough ’96MSN
Patients who have complex mental health challenges are often in and out of hospitals. An average hospital stay costs around $3,500 per day and lasts more than 11 days—amounting to more than $38,000, a sum often paid by the state through Medicaid. “And it is not uncommon for a lot of these patients to be hospitalized ten to twelve times per year,” says Joseph McDonough. At the upper end, that rounds out to $450,000 per patient per year, to say nothing of ER visits. “This is an incredibly inefficient way to take care of the population.”
McDonough is the founder and CEO of Innovive Health, based in Massachusetts. Innovive provides in-home care for these kinds of patients, but the cost is only $27,000 per year. By preventing just one visit to the hospital, Innovive saves Massachusetts $11,000. And this, McDonough notes, speaks only to the economic upside.
Read the full article and the profile on Joseph McDonough, our CEO and Yale Nursing School alumni (on page 6): They care | Features | Yale Alumni Magazine