Just 2 percent of Duluth, Minn.-based Essentia Health's heart failure patients need to be readmitted within 30 days, thanks to a remote patient monitoring program, according to a Kaiser Health News report.
The national average for these types of readmissions is 25 percent, according to the report.
Essentia provides the program's 300 participants with special scales to track weight and blood pressure daily, and the results are sent to Essentia nurses who follow up on any possible issues, according to the report.
"[The scales are] not a treatment; they're a tool. … The bigger picture is the nurses are talking to them, they're finding out what's going on," Linda Wick, nurse practitioner manager of the program, said in the report. "They're assessing, 'hey, maybe they ran out of their medications because they couldn't afford them'... so the nurses can pull in resources to help them get their medications."
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