Home follow-up boon to heart patients

This home follow-up stuff really works! A Montana patient who's at the top of the heart transplant list because of congestive heart failure has stayed out of the hospital since January. A nurse checks in on him daily by phone, as part of a CMS demonstration project, and he answers a few standard questions by pressing the touch-tone pad on his phone. The information goes directly to her computer so she can monitor fluctuations in his condition. If she catches a change, like a few pounds of weight gain, she can schedule him to see his doctor. "We have averted many hospitalizations," says Jo Rowlands, lead nurse at the Billings Clinic, in an interview with the Billings Gazette. "You usually have a two- to three-day window to see trouble coming, and you can see it coming on this phone system." The clinic is taking care of 700 heart patients, and 440 of them have signed up to use the phone monitoring system, called Tel-Assurance. Considering that caring for CHF patients is one of Medicare's biggest expenses, keeping heart-related hospitalizations down can have an enormous impact on its overall expenditures.

- check out this article in the Billings Gazette

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