Tech grant aims to help STHS heart patients amid pandemic

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Tuesday, November 30, 2021

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Tech grant aims to help STHS heart patients amid pandemic

Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org

STHS’s new wireless telehealth devices allow patients to take their blood pressure and other vital signs at home, then transmit them to the health system’s Home Health office for evaluation by a nurse seven days a week. (Stock image)

A St. Tammany Health System program to monitor the vital signs of heart patients remotely from the patients’ home is about to double, thanks to a grant from the LWCC Foundation.

The $30,600 grant is part of an effort by the foundation – the philanthropic arm of the Louisiana Workers’ Compensation Corp. – to address the state’s most pressing healthcare needs in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this case, it will allow St. Tammany’s Home Health Department to purchase an estimated 17 additional wireless monitoring devices designed to keep daily tabs on the weight, blood pressure and other vital signs of congestive heart failure patients, but without requiring a daily office visit.

According to Paula Toups, assistant vice president of STHS’s Home Health and Hospice programs, the additional machines will enable the health system to monitor some of its most vulnerable patients but without the COVID risk presented by going into public.

But that, she said, is just one benefit of what she describes as a multi-faceted, seven-day-a-week program in which a dedicated nurse reviews vital signs of all of the program’s patients and then follows up when necessary.

“One of the important pieces of managing heart failure is being proactive and looking for subtle changes,” Toups said. “For example, if their weight starts to creep up, we can intervene early and find out if it’s medication or diet or something else and keep them from having an exacerbation of disease.”

Another added value is that the STHS Home Health team doesn’t train just the patient in how to use the device. They also train their family members about the monitors as well as providing dietary tips.

“Hopefully,” Toups said, “that teaches future generations.”

The grant, made to St. Tammany Hospital Foundation on behalf of the STHS Home Health program, isn’t the first COVID grant made by the LWCC Foundation to the health system. In late 2020, it was the recipient of a $15,000 grant to establish a permanent “Recharge Room” at STHS’s Covington hospital to serve as an oasis of calm for frontline caregivers.    

“St. Tammany Health System is truly grateful for its partnership with the LWCC Foundation,” St. Tammany Hospital Foundation Executive Director Nicole Suhre said. “Now more than ever, it is important for our community to achieve and maintain their best level of health, and this program directly impacts this need. We appreciate the LWCC Foundation’s vision for improving the overall well-being of Louisiana residents, especially those susceptible to COVID-19.”


Note: This story was originally published in the fall 2021 edition of Heart to Heart magazine. Read a free digital copy of it, as well as back issues, at www.StTammany.health/Newsroom.

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