Using Telehealth to Drive Heart-Healthy Behaviors
Each February, NHLBI and The Heart Truth® celebrate American Heart Month by motivating Americans to adopt healthy lifestyles to prevent heart disease. Focusing on heart health is critical; according to the AHA, nearly 80 percent of cardiac events can be prevented. People with poor cardiovascular health are also at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19.
Using Synzi, home health clinicians can easily communicate heart-healthy behaviors to their patients. Video-based virtual visits enable agency clinicians to:
- Review the patient’s condition
- Address patient’s barriers and issues to lifestyle changes
- Reconcile medications with prescribers and pharmacists in real-time
A series of heart-health messaging also helps:
- Educate patients on how to manage conditions such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol
- Remind patients how to make heart-healthy eating changes
- Encourage patients to stay active
Using Virtual Care to Improve Outcomes
The prevalence of heart failure is high and increasing. Outpatient disease management is critical for patients with heart disease as 83% of patients are hospitalized at least once and 43% are hospitalized at least four times. Synzi’s virtual care platform helps agencies improve patients’ quality of life and reduce the risk of rehospitalization with its:
- Remote patient monitoring: enables patients to easily share their vital signs with clinicians and referral partners (such as the patient’s primary care physician).
- Assessments: helps agency administrators identify if a patient’s condition (and/or level of engagement) has changed in-between in-person and virtual visits.
- Dashboard reporting: provides real-time insight into the patient’s condition and engagement.
These features help agencies 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 CHF patients, agencies can actively enhance patients’ quality of life and satisfaction with their care while reducing the frequency and severity of hospital stays.