UPMC provides in-home telehealth equipment to promote proactive patient self-care, monitoring patients’ key measures, providing patients with easy access to guidance about their health issues, and enabling physicians to follow their patients’ health.
Benefits of Telehealth Remote Monitoring
Since nurses cannot be in the patients home 24 hours per day, telehealth remote heart monitoring provides significant benefits for heart failure patients, their families, and their physicians.
- An extra layer of security
Nurses outside the home remotely monitor patients and proactively recognize potential health risks.
- Reduced readmissions and costs
The Telemedicine Heart Failure health kit, containing a tablet and peripheral devices, has reduced readmission rates and emergency department visits for monitored patients with congestive heart failure. Reducing hospital admissions reduces costs to insurers, patients, and potentially non-reimbursable events for hospitals/facilities.
- Compliance and Continuity of Care
Monitoring results in better patient compliance (medication, diet, daily measures), resulting in better long-term care for the patients. The compliance often results in a direct correlation to avoided emergency department visits and inpatient admissions.
- Convenience and increased independence
Patients can manage their illnesses from the comfort and convenience of home.
How the Telemedicine Heart Failure Health Kit Works
The Telemedicine Heart Failure health kit is designed to identify warning signs earlier. The health kit offers continuous care regardless of geographic location. Each patient is provided with a tablet device that wirelessly transmits information to the call center.
- Patients use the tablet and included peripherals to report daily blood pressure, oxygen levels, heart rate, and weight.
- Call center nurses can contact the patient to ask follow-up questions based on care plan question responses to confirm information.
- Patients can contact the call center by phone or by two-way video via the tablet.
- Nurses can respond to questions based on the physician's orders or forward the patient's questions or concerns to their physician.
The user-friendly health kit works anywhere in Pennsylvania and is provided to patients for a period of 90 days.
- An educational video shows the patient how to use the tablet and its associated tools.
- Communications with call center nurses, equipment, and wireless transmission of information (key measures, video conversations, etc.) are seamless.
Remote monitoring is not a replacement for emergency services. In case of emergency, patients must call 911 or their local emergency services.
Candidates for Telemedicine Heart Failure Health Kit
- Diagnosis of heart failure
- Admitted to the hospital with risk of readmission
- Provider (PCP or cardiologist) feels the patient would benefit
- The health kit is available to adults 18 and older
- Average age of Heart Failure health kit users is 75
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