FSU College of Medicine 2017 annual report 2017 Annual Report - FSU College of Medicine | Page 46

DISCOVERY
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BETTER , MORE COST-EFFECTIVE WAYS TO HELP PATIENTS
Health-care costs are a concern for everyone and are at the heart of a national debate about health insurance . Working with partners including Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare ( TMH ), the FSU College of Communication and Information and the University of Florida , the College of Medicine is studying effective ways to reduce health-care costs while maintaining and improving outcomes . One such project is underway at the Transition Center , opened in 2011 to provide follow-up care for patients discharged from TMH who are at risk for readmission . Known as a “ demonstration project ,” the research involves studying the effectiveness of telehealth interventions for several patient groups at risk for hospital readmission , which is expensive and sometimes avoidable . The search involves four telehealth strategies for care provided to various Transition Center patients :
· Post-discharge phone calls for congestive heartfailure patients . The calls address a number of issues that often lead to hospital readmission , including : uncertainty about the discharge instructions ; incorrect use of prescribed medications ; and problems with scheduling and / or attending post-discharge care appointments .
· Nursing home consultations that address problems arising from the common lack of full-time medical directors or nursing staff with expertise in geriatrics . Without such expertise , problematic changes in patient vital signs can be missed , leading to a default response of sending patients to the emergency room . Using Bluetooth technology , Transition Center clinicians monitor nursing-home patient vital signs daily and call when an intervention is needed , which might include bringing those patients back to the center for a follow-up .
· Remote monitoring of high-risk patients . Again , using Bluetooth technology , Transition Center clinicians monitor weight and blood pressure signs to allow a timely response if problematic changes occur .
· Post-surgical monitoring for hip and knee replacement patients . TMH and Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic provide telemedicine follow-up consultations and assessments .
Early analyses of some of the behavioral health interventions reveal a pattern of reduced health-care costs . A sample of 143 patients over a one-year period following at least one office visit to the Transition Center showed a 65-percent reduction in number of days spent at the hospital . Projected over an entire year , the decrease among a relatively small cross-section of Transition Center patients translates to nearly a $ 1 million reduction in health-care costs . “ These are important demonstration projects to show how we do things that actually change health outcomes ,” said Senior Associate Dean Jeffrey Joyce . “ Some funds from our clinical translational science award with the University of Florida help to pay for a database analyst embedded at the Transition Center . “ By doing that , we ’ re able to analyze already existing data to show there are better outcomes associated with a particular type of care . This is the type of work that can demonstrate the value of an intervention that could be used to help numerous patients elsewhere while also potentially lowering costs .”