Telehealth keeps extra set of eyes on patients

Jane York, 70, is happy to give up a corner of her dining room table if it means her husband of 28 years, Newton, also 70, gets the extra care he needs.

“Being by myself, I feel better knowing someone else is looking in on him,” said York, whose husband has chronic lung disease. “Instead of just me making the decisions about when to call the doctor, there is someone else to do it.”

The Yorks have a “video patient station” in their home, supplied by Community Health and Counseling Services, which allows Kathy Bragdon, Telehealth nurse and grant manager at CHCS, to monitor his condition from her office miles away.

The Telehealth and Telespeech program provides patients with extra visits by medical personnel which would otherwise be unavailable to them. These systems are high-tech, but fairly easy to operate, and are free to patients who qualify.

Through Telehealth, patients can visit remotely with nurses who can check vital signs and, it’s hoped, provide intervention before a small problem turns into a hospital stay.

All the Telehealth system needs is a phone line and electricity. The patient has a computer monitor of sorts, with a camera attached. The same set-up is housed at CHCS.

Here’s how it works: The patient is called on the telephone, and after turning on the Telehealth unit, he or she and Bragdon can see each other on their respective screens. Bragdon sends commands to the patient’s computer, instructing it which vital sign to record, and the patient sends data back.

For example, the patient puts on a blood pressure cuff and presses a button on the unit. The cuff inflates. Bragdon can see the patient and, with a couple of clicks, knows instantly the blood pressure reading, which is then stored in her computer.

The patient also has a stethoscope. When it is held to the chest at certain points, Bragdon dons her headset and is able to hear the patient’s lungs.

It’s like magic. But the real magic is what it’s doing for patients. Newton York had been hospitalized five times in one year prior to receiving the Telehealth system. These stays have been greatly reduced since the unit was installed a couple of years ago.

“Telehealth provides patients with one more set of eyes on them,” said Bragdon. “This program is for high-risk patients who make frequent trips to the emergency room or have recurrent hospitalizations. In no way does this substitute for the face-to-face visit of a [medical professional]. It is a supplement to that regular visit.”

If a patient has a home health visit on Mondays and Fridays, Telehealth may check in on Wednesdays.

“A lot can happen with some patients in five days,” said Bragdon.

“We can call the physician immediately if there is a serious change in the person’s condition,” she added. “We hope this will prevent the need for hospitalization. And it is a known fact that if people are living rurally and the hospital is a 40-minute drive, they are less likely to go the emergency room. They are more likely to wait it out.”

Telehealth makes that wait shorter by intervening and working with the home health professional to ensure that every patient is getting the best possible care.

“I’ve been a nurse for 19 years,” said Bragdon. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been this happy and this satisfied doing what I’m doing.”

For more information on Telehealth, or Telespeech, which helps people who have suffered catastrophic events that have damaged their ability to speak, call CHCS at (800) 924-0366.

Carol Higgins is director of communications at Eastern Agency on Aging. For more information on EAA, call 941-2865, toll-free (800) 432-7812, e-mail info@eaaa.org, or log on www.eaaa.org. TTY 992-0150.