Honeywell HomMed is featuring new case studies highlighting effective strategies for implementing telehealth programs. Each case study examines the challenges home healthcare agencies face and how telehealth solutions using patient monitoring services can work to improve outcomes. For example, when home care providers at the Visiting Nurses Association (VNA) Home Health Hospice in South Portland Maine looked for ways to improve their telehealth program, they realized that they could expand patient care by giving their physicians the ability to monitor patients’ health status in both post-acute and hospice conditions by using the VNA’s existing telehealth system.
The Maine VNA currently uses Honeywell’s Genesis DM and Genesis Touch remote patient monitoring devices to communicate with moderate to high-risk patients for both post acute and hospice conditions. By using the combination of monitoring devices along with the LifeStream™ Management Suite enables the VNA to consolidate and track patient data.
An important aspect to streamlining care was to engage physicians in patient care only when absolutely necessary. Recently, they have proactively improved physician engagement by providing them with direct access to monitoring and tracking their patients’ health.
The VNA staff works with physicians following their patient’s hospital discharge to create standing orders for care which specifies basic trouble-shooting measures to be implemented proactively in response to changes in patient vitals.
The standing orders or protocols created in conjunction with the VNA’s partnering physicians ensure the physicians that they will be only directly contacted by VNA staff when required. This frees up the physician’s time to deal with more critical patients during office hours and in addition, the telehealth partnership with physicians has increased VNA staff efficiency
In another case, telehealth services have been used successfully to provide care to rural areas in North Dakota especially in dealing with chronic conditions that require consistent medical oversight especially after a major hospitalization.
In 2011, the St. Alexius Medical Center (SAMC) and the Great Plains Telehealth Resource and Assistance Center (gpTRAC) joined forces to evaluate the potential of a new telehealth program. The “Telehealth Home Care-Coordinated Disease Management Demonstration” project protocol consisted of remotely monitoring patient’s biometrics using Honeywell HomMed Genesis DM monitors and transmitting that data to centrally-located caregivers for analysis via the LifeStream Management Suite.
Following a patient’s discharge, SAMC collected biometric data and also recorded data points from regular conversations with patients to provide a more comprehensive picture of the patient’s overall health. gpTRAC then performed an analysis to quantify the use of telehealth services, measured the quality of services delivered, characterized cost-of-care implications, and looked at the impact of these services from the patient’s perspective.
The program showed, that hospital readmissions were substantially reduced, costs related to in-person healthcare encounters were significantly reduced, significant reductions in positive cost reimbursements was achieved, quality of care improved, a high level of access to care was provided for patients, and generally, the patients exhibited high levels of satisfaction with the use of telehealth services.
For more details on the recent case studies, go to www.hommed.com/lifestream-resources, to contact Honeywell go to www.honeywell.com, and for more information, call Liz Kohler at (414) 828-6198.
Honeywell recently featured their products and services at the 2013 ATA Meeting held in Austin Texas. For more information, go to www.americantelemed.org.