ConnectedHeartHealth - Heart Failure Readmission Intervention

A key strategy of the Affordable Care Act is the Accountable Care Organization, designed to improve the quality of care, promote population health and reduce costs by making healthcare providers more accountable for health outcomes. With the increasing pressure to simultaneously improve care and reduce the overall cost of care, there is increasing need for better care coordination, especially for patients that are high risk for readmissions and poor health outcomes, to stay connected with their healthcare provider outside of the healthcare setting. Connected Heart Health is the American Heart Association's ACO (Accountable Care Organization) strategy for post-acute care. This includes evidence based CarePlans for heart failure, cardiac rehabilitation, and coronary artery disease. These CarePlans are brought to life with technology enabled by Ambio Health, which allows patients and doctors to be connected anytime and anywhere, encouraging the adoption of self-management skills, healthy living, and evidence based practice, resulting in fewer cardiovascular events and readmissions, and lower costs. Ambio Health is an end-to-end remote patient monitoring system which includes a weight scale, blood pressure meter and blood glucose meter with wireless transmission of biometric readings through a home gateway to a web-based care management application that provides population health remote patient monitoring and engagement with automated delivery of the CarePlans. Ambio Health will be introduced as a viable method for remote monitoring of heart failure patients, with an emphasis on reducing readmission rates and promoting self-management skills. This program is intended to implement the AHA's Connected Heart Health CarePlan and educational content for patients in conjunction with a platform designed to upload biometric data and provide care coordination as directed and implemented by discharging physicians/institutions. The intent is to design and execute a Pilot with Sinai Hospital of Baltimore.