Benefit of a Telehealth home-monitoring program for patients living with frailty undergoing heart surgery

Benefit of a Telehealth home-monitoring program for patients living with frailty undergoing heart surgery

About the Project:

Heart surgery is increasingly sought after and available for older individuals living with some degree of vulnerability also referred to as frail. Unfortunately, being frail means that after surgery patients have a higher risk of complications and have a harder time returning home in a timely manner and staying home. In the present study we will be testing how an emerging technology called Telehealth home-monitoring can help patients return home while remaining in contact with their health care team via telephone or video link for the first 30 days after surgery. We hypothesize that our Telehealth intervention will allow patients to make their transition home more successful and result in fewer visits to the emergency room (ER) or needing to be re-admitted to the hospital after discharge. Our research program will therefore:

  • Objective 1: Review data from the last 5 years at the NB Heart Centre (NBHC) documenting the experience and difficulties lived by older frail patients undergoing heart surgery with particular attention to their struggles returning home and remaining functional
  • Objective 2: Create a comprehensive education program and Telehealth intervention to help transition home
  • Objective 3: Implement and measure the benefit of our intervention in 120 consecutive patients compared to historical data obtained in Objective 1 prior to the intervention

Project Team

Principal Investigators:

Co-Investigators:

  • Tammy Campbell, RN — New Brunswick Heart Centre/Horizon Health
  • Ansar Hassan, MD — New Brunswick Heart Centre/Horizon Health

Project contact: Jean-Francois Legare — legarej@me.com

CAT2018-13

Keywords: frailty; readmission to hospital; cardiac surgery; outcomes; aging; co-morbidities