World Heart Day
People with cardiovascular disease (CVD) have been disproportionately impacted by the PHE and may have experienced missed medical appointments, lack of contact with family and friends, and reduced opportunities to exercise. According to the World Heart Federation, the pandemic has emphasized the need to find different and innovative ways to connect people to better heart health behaviors, particularly in lower resource areas and communities.
This year on World Heart Day, the WHF is asking the world to “Use Heart to Connect.” 2021’s goal is to harness the power of digital health to improve awareness, prevention and management of CVD. Virtual care and telehealth can help clinicians use knowledge, compassion and influence to make sure the patients they support have the best chance to live heart-healthy lives.
Using Virtual Care to Enhance Satisfaction and Outcomes
Using Synzi, clinicians can better communicate heart-healthy behaviors to their patients.
- Virtual visits allows agency clinicians to review the patient’s condition, address patient’s barriers and issues to lifestyle changes (e.g., diet, exercise, alcohol and tobacco use), promote adherence and reconcile medications with prescribers and pharmacists in real-time.
- Condition management messaging reinforces patient education on how to manage conditions such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. A series of timely messages also promotes medication adherence, including ones that treat risk factors like blood pressure, or to dissolve blood clots. Messaging can also remind patients how to make heart-healthy eating changes and encourage patients to stay active.
- Remote patient monitoring enables patients to easily share their vital signs with clinicians and referral partners (such as the patient’s physician). Clinicians will receive an alert if an abnormal reading has occurred so staff can reach out to the patient and help reduce ER visits and rehospitalizations amongst high-risk and rising-risk patients when possible.
- Assessments helps agency administrators identify if a patient’s condition, medication adherence, and/or level of engagement has changed throughout the episode of care.
- Dashboard reporting: provides real-time insight into the patient’s condition and engagement.
The above features help agencies better care for their patients with CVD and explore if the plan of care needs to be changed prior to the next interaction and/or facilitate real-time interventions to help prevent adverse outcomes.
Patients value the ongoing support provided in the cadence of touchpoints. Family caregivers value the ability to receive real-time guidance and support from home health staff which deepens their confidence in being able to provide their loved one with optimal care. And, both patients and caregivers appreciate the convenience of being able to immediately access their home health clinicians for critical health-related needs and/or quick questions regarding heart health.
By using Synzi to manage and motivate patients with CVD, agencies can actively enhance patients’ quality of life and satisfaction with their care while reducing the frequency and severity of hospital stays.