Sometimes, the best way to prevent a visit to the hospital is to become your own care provider. That's the theory behind a new Stanford-led project that monitors heart-failure patients at home.
From an Inside Stanford Medicine story on the pilot program:
"There is abundant evidence in the literature that suggests home monitoring can improve patient outcomes," said Rita Ghatak, PhD, director of Stanford's Aging Adult Services, one of the sponsors of the program. "It can improve survival, days out of the hospital, quality of life and it provides an extra measure of psychosocial support."
Project leaders teach heart-failure patients, such as 74-old-year Earl Shook, who is featured in the story, how to measure their blood pressure and oxygen saturation at home. Patients also receive visits from specially trained nurses. A nurse caught when Shook's blood pressure was climbing too high and helped get him in to the cardiologist the next day.
Shook said it was hard to leave the hospital, but he was reassured by the home-monitoring program. "It let me know there was somebody still caring for me."
Previously: Exercise may boost heart failure patients' mental and physical health, Failing at prescribing the best heart-failure treatments and Home health-care treatments for lymphedema patients cut costs and improve care
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