How Cardiac Monitoring Became Commonplace in Brooklyn
October 10, 2017
Hospital readmission among congestive heart failure patients can be costly and many hospitals do whatever they can to prevent patient readmission shortly after treatment. The Allure Group has developed a protocol that uses remote monitoring procedures to better handle changes in a patient’s health so cardiologists can get involved quickly to administer treatment. This greatly improves patient outcomes and has now been implemented at the Crown Heights location in Brooklyn, New York.
Now, other Brooklyn rehab and nursing facilities are also making use of this protocol with great success. The ‘Hearts in Motion’ helps streamline communications between nursing facilities and doctors so that patients receive prompt treatment. This is accomplished by deploying a multidisciplinary team of medical professionals and other individuals to support the patient as soon as they are admitted to the nursing facility. The team includes a cardiologist, a nurse, and a rehab social worker and they are assigned to a patient to keep close track of their progress.
Medical professionals involved with the patient receive alerts when a patient’s health changes to a certain degree. This reduces the need to diagnose on the spot after symptoms appear because the doctor or other medical professionals are aware of what is happening well before someone might report it. Getting real-time alerts about a patient’s condition can be extremely helpful for doctors who might be seeing several patients in a given day or handling tasks and duties away from the patient during certain times of the day.
Since the staff members assigned to the patient are educated and trained to watch for symptoms of congestive heart failure, they can take action almost immediately. This prevents costly delays in getting the right medical staff to the patient in a time of need and also improves patient outcomes because the patient will receive appropriate treatment in a timely manner.
As a result, fewer patients need to be readmitted within a few weeks or months after their initial hospital stay. Patients receive the high level of care they deserve from cardiologists and other medical professionals responsible for administering critical care to the patient at the right time. They make use of automated alert systems with the Hearts in Motion protocol to keep close track of the patient’s condition and to monitor for any significant changes in blood pressure, respiration, and other vitals.
One of the benefits of implementing this protocol at Brooklyn nursing and medical facilities is the improvement in staffing efficiency. Doctors and support staff members could be assigned blocks of time based on patient need and this helps administrators manage time and resources more effectively. Cardiac monitoring protocols can be implemented without increasing the cost of having a cardiologist onsite on a given day or other costs associated with having medical staff members available on-call.
Another major benefit of this protocol is that doctors and nurses can provide the right level of treatment at the right time, greatly reducing wasted resources while providing patients with a better level of care. This helps keep patients out of the hospital for longer periods of time. Cardiologists and other medical staff members on duty can then focus their time and effort on new patient cases or more critical medical emergencies.
The Allure Group is a market leader in cardiac monitoring and its introduction of the Hearts in Motion protocol has made a big impact in Brooklyn nursing and rehab facilities. The protocol was developed by its Chief Medical Officer, Rekha Bhandari, MD; Jeffrey Bander, MD; and Chief Operating Officer, Melissa Powell. Results of a study conducted at five skilled nursing facilities in New York City revealed a decrease of readmissions from 31 percent to seven percent over a seven-month period.