Nursing Spectrum and Nurse.Com Feature SeniorBridge's Clinical Expertise, Technology Innovation and National Scope with our Virtual Health Program

Nurse.com and Nursing Spectrum, one of the leading publications in the nation serving Registered Nurses, featured SeniorBridge's Virtual Health program along with expert comments from SeniorBridge's Eric C. Rackow, MD  and Donna Pierre-Pierre, RN, MPA, director of quality management and clinical operations.

Below are a few excerpts. You can read the entire article here.

A service, called Virtual Health, provides health monitoring and lifestyle services for the elderly, allowing them to remain independent at home.

Partnering with SeniorBridge was a natural fit. The agency has 43 offices in 11 states, said Eric Rackow, MD, SeniorBridge's president. "We have about 1,500 caregivers of which two-thirds are RNs," he said. "The other one-third are social workers. The combination allows us to not only provide medical relief but [also] care for the person's overall well-being in a holistic fashion. We had been looking for a way to be more cost-effective in that."
 
Donna Pierre-Pierre, RN, MPA, director of quality management and clinical operations at SeniorBridge, was involved in the trial, serving as a nurse case manager. "I've been a nurse for 15 years in a variety of settings and I really believe this is a forward-thinking program," she said. The service uses the FDA-cleared Care Innovations Guide platform, which enables providers to remotely monitor patient vital signs, such as blood pressure, weight and glucose, and engage the patient via video-conferencing technology.

The system is deployed on a tablet and allows for face-to-face interaction between the senior and the nurse case manager, not just audio and speech, Rackow said. "It's very user friendly. You can sit in your armchair and talk to your care manager," he said. "That's extremely useful because the nurse can see their composure and decide if they seem to be depressed, for example. This can reduce the need for how much in-home time is needed and that will reduce the cost."

An added benefit is seniors have their own personal "health" portal where they or their family can log on to see how they are doing. "They are able to log in like a bank account," Go said. "We felt strongly that any package should have that as part of the program."

Pierre-Pierre believes the service offers several benefits including real-time results that allow the nurse case manager to react quickly if there is a problem, the ability to track and report the patient's progress over the continuum of care and the ability to have face-to-face contact.

"It's a high-tech program, but it's very simple to use, so just about everyone can participate," she said, "from those who are functionally independent to those who aren't. It gives us really important information that we may not get otherwise."

"We collaborated with SeniorBridge because they understand the processes." Go said.