May 15, 2010, San Antonio, TX: Meridian Health ("Meridian") and Proximiti Communications Inc. ("Proximiti") today announced the rollout of Proximiti’s Personal Health Network ("PHN)" Services in association with a Congestive Heart Failure ("CHF") pilot.
In this application, Proximiti’s Personal Health Network Services will allow patients to answer key health questions regarding their symptoms on a daily basis for 30 days after discharge from the hospital.
PHN will then analyze the data and automatically notify appropriate Meridian clinicians when answers fall outside the norm for the patient.
Clinicians then reach out to the patients and help them take measures that will help keep their condition under control.
By providing a mechanism to allow patients to actively participate in their care and give caregivers the opportunity to review changes in symptoms, Meridian gains the opportunity to provide better care, increase self management support and reduce unnecessary readmissions.
"We know closely monitoring CHF patients and providing more self management support after discharge from the hospital can greatly reduce the number of unnecessary emergency room visits and readmissions." stated Sandra Elliott, Director, Consumer Technology and Service Development for Meridian.
"Proximiti’s Personal Health Network Services allow us to initiate cost effective monitoring without expensive and proprietary equipment.
In addition, the Service also provides mechanisms to allow family members to review patient progress and more fully participate in helping patients manage their conditions."
"Everyone believes that telemedicine offers significant opportunities to provide better care at lower costs" asserted Chuck McDonough, Chief Technology Officer of Proximiti.
He continued that "however, most telemedicine applications to date lack the ability to scale to support large population bases and require a significant upfront cost in specialized equipment.
Proximiti’s relatively low cost solution supports the use of simple phone calls that can optionally be augmented by integration with off-the-shelf standardized equipment in an easy to use manner that requires no special skill set on the part of the patient.
By also supporting family caregiver access to a patient medical metrics in addition to review by Meridian’s professional staff, PHN provides more opportunity to optimize a patient’s well being."
Meridian Health is the leading not-for-profit health care organization in New Jersey, comprising Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Ocean Medical Center, Riverview Medical Center, Southern Ocean County Hospital, K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital, and Meridian Partner Companies that include home health services, skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers, ambulatory care, ambulance services, and outpatient centers.
Meridian Health has consistently been rated among the top performing health systems in New Jersey for clinical quality, is one of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For, and is the recipient of numerous state and national recognitions for patient care and nursing excellence, including the distinction of being the first health system in the country to receive Magnet designation for nursing excellence by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, a distinction earned by less than 3% of hospitals nationwide.
Tampa based Proximiti Communications is a leading provider of hosted software applications oriented toward medical and legal organizations as well as a provider of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telecommunications services.
Proximiti’s unique offering of its Personal Health Network brings the value of telemedicine services at an affordable price without the need for the patient or the service provider to make a large startup investment in nonstandard proprietary equipment.
Proximiti’s Personal Health Network Services also provides convenient mechanisms to allow family caregivers to monitor and track patient well being and compliance with medical protocols personally established for the patient.
The Service’s ability to review patient performance against pre-established norms and to correspondingly initiate alerts to healthcare providers offers significant opportunities to provide better health services at greatly reduced overall costs.
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CONTACT: Don Davis
Proximiti Communications, Inc.
5410 Mariner Street, Suite 175
Tampa, FL 33609
813.579.1036
don.davis@proximiti.com
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CONTACT: Mike Valentino
Meridian Health
1350 Campus Parkway
Neptune, NJ 07753
732.751.7538
mvalentino@meridianhealth.com
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