Press Release

Home Telemonitoring Helps Burgess Watch over patients

Burgess Home Health now says “good morning” every day to Margaret Wood of Onawa and extends an extra helping hand as part of a new home telemonitoring system installed in her bedroom.

Margaret is one of nearly a dozen patients now benefiting from computerized technology that is monitoring her every day. After her breakfast each morning the 70-year-old grandmother hears a voice prompt that reminds her to check in. Sitting in her apartment she places a blood pressure cuff on her arm which gives a reading. She places a sensor on her finger to measure heart rate and oxygen saturation. She then stands on a digital scale which can tell if she’s gaining weight from fluid that can build-up with decreased heart and lung function.

Margaret’s vital signs are all recorded at a central station at the Burgess home health office block away where one of several trained registered nurses reads vital signs and can take action if serious health issues are developing.

A Burgess home health nurse continues to personally visit Margaret each Thursday to take vital signs and supply her with needed medications for her heart and lung disease. “They’re all nice. They’re good to me,” Margaret says. The daily monitoring, she adds, gives her an extra sense of security.

Burgess home health installed the special system in homes this month to better monitor certain patients, reduce hospitalizations and unscheduled visits, says Sherri Johnston, Burgess home health director.

“Telemonitoring will alert our nurses to recognize subtle changes and intervene early,” Johnston says. “We want to see a patient before he or she is in crisis to keep people out of the hospital more and in the comfort of home. It helps us provide the right care in the right place.

“It’s been wonderful just in the first several weeks,” Johnston adds. “We’ve caught three or four circumstances where a patient had problems and we could address them immediately with medication.”

The system can be programmed to tailor certain questions to different people, depending on their needs, says Cindy Kuhlmann, one of several trained home health nurses who reads the daily reports each morning. Kuhlmann and her fellow nurses also send trend reports to physicians to keep them updated on patient care.

Burgess Home Health is one of the first in the area to get the home monitoring system, Johnston says.

“We appreciate the strong support we received from Dr. Dudley, our medical director, our other physicians and Burgess leaders who allowed us to obtain this system,” says Johnston. “It’s patient friendly and encourages patients to get more involved in managing their health.”

For more information on the system call Johnston at Burgess, 712-423-9324.