Telemonitoring Helps Enhance Care
United HomeCare Services has been a provider of home health care services to the elderly and disabled in Miami, Florida for over 30 years. As a home health care agency we are no strangers to the challenges of caring and managing the chronically ill. Clients with chronic conditions benefit from direct support and training on the self-management of their chronic medical diseases. To address these needs our agency looked to telemonitoring technology. Telemonitoring helps individuals manage their disease, provides reassurance, contributes to a greater quality of life, and supports a persons desire to remain living in their own home for as long as possible.
Potentially manageable chronic medical conditions such as Diabetes, Cardiac Conditions, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and High Blood Pressure become acute episodes often requiring unnecessary ER visits and hospitalizations. Typically, clients alternate from chronic to acute with no in-between managed state. In many cases these acute episodes can be avoided with early detection and prompt treatment.
A Telemonitoring system is an easy to use hospital-grade FDA Class II medical device that installed in a clients home allows for daily remote monitoring of clinically relevant data. Readings are transmitted via phone line from a clients home to our main office Central Station software system, where they are monitored daily by a Registered Nurse. The Central Station produces trend reports in graphic and tabular format that can be faxed directly to a physicians office. These reports provide physicians with reliable data needed to alter, when necessary, the patients therapeutic regimens, and help reduce the number of unscheduled phone calls and visits, while providing the physician with valuable information prior to a scheduled visit.
The small monitor is a patient-friendly device, the size of an alarm clock, capable of asking up to ten yes/no questions in twelve different languages. These questions can be customized for each client based on his or her diagnosis. The device monitors pulse, blood pressure, weight, oxygen levels, and blood sugar levels for diabetics. Candidates for monitoring include those who suffer from congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Each client has a preprogrammed set of limits for their individual vital signs readings. When readings exceed those limits, the Central Station clinician can take the necessary action.
With a consent form, relatives and those responsible for the well being of the client can also have access to view the trending of these vitals over the Internet. This then becomes a team approach where the home care agency, the physician, and the patients family can keep a close eye on their loved one.
From a home care perspective this technology becomes a key component of care as it allows for the stabilization of an individuals chronic medical conditions and the self-management of their disease. “It helps them to see the effects of their health regimen on a daily basis. For example they can see that when medication is not taken, blood pressure or blood sugar levels may be high,” says Central Station Nurse, Hernado Dorado. Telemonitoring serves as a support and reinforcement for follow-up. “The benefit is that clients and/or caregivers become more in tune with the signs and symptoms of changes in health condition”, he says. Daily monitoring can positively impact client care and quality of life and most importantly it can allow the elderly to remain living as independently as possible, which is priceless.
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