Nursing homes add cardiac monitoring services to reduce hospitalizations

By Tracey Drury for Buffalo Business First — Two local Elderwood skilled nursing facilities are the first in the region to offer cardiac telemetry services outside of a hospital setting.

Cardiac telemetry is a monitoring system for patients with chronic heart conditions. It’s used to monitor patients after surgery or a heart attack, and during flare-ups for individuals with congestive heart failure.

Elderwood invested more than $120,000 for monitoring equipment and wireless technology as well as nurse training at its facilities in Amherst and Lancaster, where telemetry is now available at each site’s sub-acute care units. The service offers an alternative to hospitalization for patients referred by their cardiologist for monitoring, said Kathy Avino, post acute cardiac educator.

“It’s a step-down unit for patients that are ready to go home, but need a little bit of extra TLC to get back on their feet,” she said.

Elderwood partnered on the unit with the Cardiology Group of Western New York, whose Dr. Salvatore Calandra is serving as medical director for the program.

The program will target patients with congestive heart failure, especially patients who have recurring conditions that result in frequent hospitalizations or who can no longer be managed in the home care setting, he said.

“Sometimes they’re to the point where they’re not critical, but yet they’re too difficult to handle at home and need more TLC in terms of close monitoring or bloodwork,” Calandra said. “At the same time, it can help expedite hospital discharge for people who don’t have the support care at home or live alone.”

Calandra said it’s part of a growing number of service lines that in the past could only be provided in more expensive hospital settings, such as post-surgical care for people receiving new hips and knees who now spend just a few days in the hospital instead of a week, often moving to sites like Elderwood for therapy and recovery.

Post Acute Partners operates 16 Elderwood nursing home and senior living sites in Western New York. The telemetry unit is the next in a series of enhanced services and programs added since the company bought the sites in 2013. Last fall, the company received state approval to provide managed long-term care (MLTC) services for residents at its Elderwood facilities as well as those at other community sites and seniors living at home. Other new services include an oncology program in Hamburg in partnership with Roswell Park Cancer Institute and a wound care specialty unit in Cheektowaga.

Telemetry also fits in well with the company’s other ER-diversion programs, said Anna Bojarczuk-Foy, director of business development. It also offers an alternative setting for care outside of the hospital observation unit, which can also be more expensive.

The program was developed after Elderwood was approached by several cardiologists looking for an alternative to unnecessary hospitalization, she said.

“There’s a lot of people with cardiac co-morbidities living in the community and the only choice they have now is to send them to the hospital, which they felt was not good for the patient,” Bojarczuk-Foy said. “Then they were in an environment that lends itself to other issues, maybe not being paid attention to or other more acute issues or exposure to infectious disease.”

Tracey Drury covers health/medical, nonprofits and insurance.

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