Page 5 Case Studies in Telehealth Adoption Centura Heal that Home Telehealth as the Standard of Care

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FoCuS: 30 DAyS To MAke A DiFFerenCe focus: title

to 133.2 +/- 16.8 mmHg, while average dia-
stolic blood pressure (DBP) decreased from Figure 2: Blood Pressure Change During Study.
88.7 +/- 9.7 to 76.2 +/- 12.6. In the fifth week
(at 37 days), overall blood pressures con-
tinued to decrease to averages of SBP 125.8
+/- 14.4 and DBP 79.8 +/- 6.5.
Secondary Outcomes
At the end of the patient’s study period,
each was asked to complete a patient satis-
faction survey. Twenty-nine surveys were
returned. Table 3 shows the results of the
patient satisfaction survey:
The results of the patient satisfaction
survey indicate a high degree of satisfac-
tion, improved education of the patients
regarding their knowledge of their hyper-
tension and how to manage it (self-efficacy),
and interest to recommend the program to
others. It also indicates a low willingness of
the patients to pay out-of-pocket for such
monitoring services.
An additional outcome is the recog-
nition that the remote patient monitor-
ing and feedback to the physician office
enabled a nurse practitioner to make
adjustments to medications (change of
medication type or of doses of existing
medication) without having the patient
come into the physician office. This saved
office visit costs, as well as saving patient
time away from home or work, and related Table 3: Patient experience Survey Questions.
expenses (e.g., gas, parking). Having the
nurse practitioner make the medication
adjustments also saved physician time,
theoretically enabling the physician to see
more patients. An economic analysis was
not completed on this study, so no formal
economic conclusion can be made, though
one might deduce that additional cost sav-
ings may have occurred through avoidance
of potential acute events (e.g., myocardial
Infarction), due to the reduced time taken
to get the patients’ blood pressures under
control, especially if the program were
scaled to include more patients.
dISCuSSIOn
The study, which was initiated to determine
whether a combination of remote patient
monitoring, shortened provider feedback
intervals, and patient engagement and edu-
cation would both improve outcomes and
increase patients’ abilities to self-manage