Telehealth reduces readmissions

ATLANTA – A telehealth system is improving care for a facility’s heart failure patients while saving money for a specialty treatment center at Piedmont Hospital.

Atlanta-based Fuqua Heart Center, located on the campus of the facility, is using remote monitoring devices in patients’ homes to keep track of their conditions.

The devices and related application enabled Fuqua to post a significantly lower rate for hospital readmissions for heart failure patients.

That’s important, because Medicare typically does not pay for readmissions for heart failure patients within 30 days of discharge, and hospitals have to absorb the cost of treatment for readmissions.

Fuqua staff can keep track of patients’ conditions on a daily basis. That helps them to aggressively manage patients so that any health concerns are noticed and treated quickly.

“We provide intimate care for our heart failure patients,” said Jennie Mattia, manager of cardiovascular quality and heart failure disease management at Fuqua Heart Center. “If a patient calls and leaves a message, we quickly have a clinician on the phone.”

Fuqua implemented a Web-based program and RemoteNurse monitor units from WebVMC, a Conyers, Ga.-based healthcare technology vendor. The three-pound monitors are placed in patients’ homes. The monitors ask patients to respond to a series of questions and then use attached monitoring devices to obtain physiologic information on patients.

Responses and data are forwarded via phone lines, and caregivers can access data through a WebVMC application. Out-of-range responses or data is flagged for immediate attention; the Web-based program enables caregivers to access information from anywhere.

“We can trend and track information on patients,” Mattia said. “We can mine that data and do something meaningful with it.”

Fuqua was able to use the WebVMC devices and application to post a 1.45 percent rate for heart failure patients for readmissions within 30 days after discharge, compared with a 5.85 percent readmission rate for Piedmont Hospital and an estimated average readmission rate of 20 percent nationally.

“Once we get the patient comfortable and stable, then we hand them back to the doctor,” Mattia said.

The return on investment for the telehealth program can be quickly attained, said Scott Shepherd, president and chief technology officer for WebVMC.

“Readmission for chronic heart failure is so cost-prohibitive that if you can save one readmission, the ROI is tremendous.”