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March 6, 2023: Best Buy’s Geek Squad, known for installing TVs and home theatre systems, is now setting up virtual hospital rooms in patients’ homes. The consumer electronics retailer has partnered with Atrium Health, a North Carolina-based healthcare system, to enable a hospital-at-home program. The Geek Squad will install technology that remotely monitors patients’ vitals and trains them on how to use the devices, with the data securely shared with doctors and nurses through Current Health’s telemedicine hub. Best Buy began setting up virtual-care systems in mid-February for ten hospitals in and around Charlotte, North Carolina.
Atrium Health will buy the devices from Best Buy and use Geek Squad services for installation and retrieval when the patient is cleared from care. Patients will pay Atrium through their insurance, including Medicare or Medicaid. Best Buy’s healthcare expansion comes as sales of other consumer electronics slow, with the company expecting a same-store sales decline of between 3% and 6% in the fiscal year.
Over the past five years, Best Buy has acquired three healthcare companies, including GreatCall, Critical Signal Technologies, and Current Health, and sells health and wellness devices, including hearing aids and fitness trackers. CEO Corie Barry expects sales in Best Buy’s health division to grow faster than the rest of its business this fiscal year. However, Best Buy Health’s President Deborah Di Sanzo notes that the revenue from the at-home-care side of the health business is “still very small.”
Atrium Health began its hospital-at-home program out of necessity early in the pandemic when patients with COVID-19 crowded its hospitals and filled its intensive care units. The healthcare system saw the program had lasting benefits and could work for patients with other kinds of conditions, such as those recovering from a heart condition, infection, or surgery. It costs less than hospital care and allows patients to recover while surrounded by loved ones and the comforts of home. So far, Atrium Health has served over 6,300 patients through the hospital-at-home program.
