CMH wins $680,000 grant for telehealth systems

The Bolivar hospital will use the three-year grant to integrate Atlanta-based Patient Care Technologies’ Well@Home telehealth systems into its electronic medical records network.

Monitoring equipment will be placed in high-risk patients’ homes, and patients will learn how to submit information about pulse, blood sugar, electrocardiogram, respiration, oxygen intake and weight via telephone connection. The equipment also provides disease education and helps patients manage their medications.

Patient information is automatically transmitted from the homes to patients’ electronic medical records, allowing physicians to monitor their conditions in real time.

“These patients may need constant monitoring but not hospitalization, and the new technology will give us that capability,” said Valerie Noblitt, CMH program director, in a news release. “This will go a long way to a goal of reducing hospitalization rates and improving outcomes.”

Among the CMH patients to benefit from the Well@Home telehealth systems is Marion Head, a resident of Pittsburg, Mo., who has congestive heart failure that required frequent doctor visits, emergency trips to the hospital and anxiety about her health.

Following a heart attack and subsequent surgery to implant a stint, Head experienced chest pain that led to a second hospitalization and stint surgery. When she returned to her home in late October, her doctor recommended home health, and a Well@Home unit was placed in Head’s home.

Head says having the equipment in place has relieved much of her anxiety about her health.

“I can send alerts to the (CMH Home Healthcare) nurses through the machine when I’m not feeling right, which has kept me from a few unnecessary late-night trips to the emergency room,” Head said in a separate news release.

Well@Home units are about the size of a laptop computer. The unit uses a preset alarm to tell Head to check her blood pressure, pulse and weight with integrated measurement devices, and the readings are transmitted to her electronic medial record so that nurses and Head’s doctor can review them.

Before having Well@Home, Head said she had never used a computer. The device operates with a user-friendly touch screen, and guides patients on how to measure their vital signs and manage their medication, and it provides condition-specific education.

“I was a little scared of it at first, but it is very easy to use,” Head said of Well@Home.

CMH offers home-health, hospice, home medical equipment and homemaker-plus services to residents in Polk, Dallas, Hickory, Greene, St. Clair and Benton counties.[[In-content Ad]]