Introduction
In the United States, chronic heart failure is regarded as the number one cause of both the hospitalization and readmission of patients. Statistics suggest that almost half of heart failure patients are readmitted within six months of leaving the hospital. This, therefore, calls for proper outpatient management for the sole purpose of preventing readmission. Home health care visits are part of the measures taken to prevent readmission of patients especially in remote areas where the current telemonitoring and television cannot be accessed.
Preventing readmissions of patients with heart failure through home health care or telemonitoring
In a bid to prevent readmission of chronically ill patients, outpatient care has been attributed as one of the measures that recently discharged patients are incorporated into. The outpatient care is comprised of home health visits that are conducted by skilled health care workers. In addition to this, there has been a shift in outpatient care from home health care visits to telecommunication which is comprised of devices such as television, telemonitoring and telephone. According to a study conducted from reliable web sources that were limited to the sources of the year 2006-2010, it was discovered that in the majority of the studies “usual care” was considered to be the control group. In addition to this, no attempt was made in defining as well as measuring the “usual care”.
Conclusion
The majority of the studies conducted did not advocate for various types of telemonitoring modalities. This is because these studies lack sufficient data to suggest tele-devices as a cause of fewer readmissions. In a comparison of the home health care services to telecommunication devices, it was identified that telecommunication had no major advantage over home health care services. All in all the readmission of heart failure patients has been classed as a multifaceted issue.