New program decreases heart failure readmissions
by
Jordan Shefte
Story Created:
Feb 20, 2012 at 6:54 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Feb 20, 2012 at 7:34 PM CDT
It's a common occurrence for heart patients: being readmitted into the hospital for heart failure. But Mary Lanning Memorial Healthcare has a new program that is changing that trend. It's called the Health Enhancement Program.
News 5's Jordan Shefte met up with the program coordinator today.
Jordan, the hospital has seen quite a change in the number of heart patient readmissions since the start of this program, haven't they?
Since the program began in April of 2011, there has been a seventy - percent drop in the heart failure readmissions among patients who participated in that program.
Those involved with the program say it's all comes down to a little extra care for the heart, from the heart.
"The hospital is constantly looking for ways to improve our patient care, and in looking at the statistics, they found that we had an increase in the number of readmissions for heart failure patients," said Cardiac Rehab Patient Care Coordinator Jan Williams.
It's a statistic the cardiac rehab staff decided needed to change.
So they developed a new heart failure education program called the Health Enhancement Program.
Patients still receive education prior to being discharged from the hospital, but that's just the beginning.
"Then we bring them in as an outpatient for four to six weeks just to make sure they stay out of the hospital," said Mary Lanning Staff RN Liz Bartunek.
At those visits, nurses use these books to give patients a step by step explanation on how to make heart failure, more manageable,
"What it has in there is things on their diet, things on salt, fluid restrictions, activity, some of their medications we go through, so it's a really helpful book," Bartunek said.
Already the program has generated positive results.
"We enrolled twenty one patients into our outpatient program, and during the first six months, we had no readmissions within that first thirty days, so that was really a big milestone for us," Williams said.
Heart failure readmission rates in the first quarter of 2011 at Mary Lanning were at 19.4%. After the induction of this program, rates are now down to 3.7%.
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