The PacifiCare Taking Charge of Your Heart Health program uses Health Hero technology to facilitate in-home daily monitoring, coaching, education, and reinforcement of self-care management skills to patients with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). Results of an independent outcomes analysis performed by Towers Perrin shows significant reductions in hospitalizations and emergency room visits for patients in the program.
The outcomes analysis showed inpatient hospitalizations were reduced by 50% and ER visits by 73%. Costs for hospitalizations and ER visits were reduced by 50% and total savings in claims paid of $5,271 per member per year were realized.
The PacifiCare ‘Taking Charge of Your Heart Health’ program yielded excellent results for the PacifiCare members in the program, says Dr Jerome Vaccaro, Vice President and Corporate Medical Director of PacifiCare Behavioral Health. We see this program, using the Health Hero system, as a platform for widespread use in self-management of a variety of conditions in a range of healthcare settings. We will be offering this and a range of similar programs to our health plan customers and other payers, since we see the real value in this approach – we save lives while keeping health care affordable.
Health Hero provides its Health Hero(R) iCare Desktop(TM), and Health Buddy(R) appliance, to managed care organizations, HMOs, Hospitals/IDNs, Provider Networks and Disease Management companies seeking an efficient and effective solution to remotely monitor and manage patients with a variety of chronic conditions. Designed as an integrated, Internet-based solution, the Health Hero platform helps care managers identify problems sooner and facilitates patient education for self-management and behavioral modification.
Our mission is to empower caregivers to better manage chronic conditions while enabling health plans to continuously improve the quality of their services to members, said Steve Brown, CEO of Health Hero, in a press statement.
PacifiCare’s results show that leading health plans can achieve significant financial savings through better care management, and we look forward to widespread adoption of our technology in CHF and other chronic conditions.
