Clark County (The Evening News)
Floyd Memorial Hospital Health Buddy provides medical care through telemedicine in Southern Indiana
The buddy system
Floyd Perdue has a buddy.
A Health Buddy that is.
Perdue, who suffers from a chronic lung disease and congestive heart failure, used to make numerous trips to the hospital or doctor’s office for a checkup or to have his vital signs monitored. But ever since his Health Buddy moved into his Jeffersonville home, those trips are no longer necessary.
Perdue’s buddy takes all of his vital signs each day and asks important questions concerning his health issues.
“I love it; it has kept me out of the hospital,” he said. “If something is wrong, they will call me right back.”
The Health Buddy is a small box which sits on Perdue’s kitchen table. The push-button telemedicine device plugs into a telephone jack and sends all his information to Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services.
“If his blood pressure is too high, or too low, it sends an alert to our system,” said Michelle Wyatt, a registered nurse who works with FMH Home Health Services. “A nurse will call him right back.”
“I know if it’s too high or low, the phone is going to ring,” Perdue said. “They might tell me to slack off on water or salt. It helps me keep better control of myself.”
Wyatt said before, if a patient was tired or out of breath, they may have blamed it on doing too much on that particular day. Now, they will be able to have the Health Buddy check them out immediately and send the information to the hospital.
Perdue is still checked twice a month by his home health nurse, Angela Jones.
His life changed forever on a day in 1996. That’s when he slipped and fell 6 feet on his face. Since then, he has had numerous breathing problems, suffers from congestive heart failure and other health-related issues. At 62, he is disabled and spends most on his time in his Jeffersonville home with his wife and Health Buddy.
“I never had a bit of problems before [the accident],” he said. “That changed my whole life.”
Wyatt said the Health Buddy also helps cut down on costs.
“We utilize telemedicine to educate patients, but if insurance only pays for X amount of visits, we use it to minimize visits,” she said.
The Health Buddy is part of Home Health Care and Medicare and Medicaid pay 100 percent of the costs. The only stipulations are that the patient is homebound and can only go out if someone else drives, goes to church, doctor’s visits or family functions.
DID YOU KNOW
• In addition to eliminating emergency room visits, telemedicine can delay the cost of nursing home care, make the discharge from a hospital faster and easier, and it gives caregivers peace of mind, so they don’t have to miss work because they’re worried about leaving their loved one.
— Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services
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