Waveny LifeCare Network announced that it has been awarded LeadingAge Connecticut’s prestigious Spirit of Innovation Award for implementation of its Telemedicine Services Program in its Care Center’s short-term rehabilitation unit. The award was presented to Waveny’s President and CEO Russell Barksdale, Jr. at the 2023 Leading Age Connecticut Annual Meeting on Tuesday, October 10, 2023.
“Telemedicine in and of itself is not a new innovation, its evolution mirrors that of U.S. communication and information technologies,” said Russell Barksdale, Jr., President and CEO of Waveny LifeCare Network. “However, designing, developing, and implementing a personalized telemedicine device for each resident in a skilled nursing facility required exceptional innovation, programming, customization and responsiveness, given COVID-era imperatives and a heightened need for enhanced anticipatory care and risk management tools.”
In order to serve an increasingly higher acuity patient and resident, Waveny has optimized real-time resident assessments to anticipate changes in condition before they became emergent, while seamlessly engage physician specialists and health professionals in real-time and promoting optimal client outcomes and family satisfaction.
To accomplish this, the patient experience involves real-time monitoring of blood pressure, pulse, blood oxygen levels and body weight, wound visualization, and change in conditions from health data automatically transmitted to Waveny’s dedicated Telemedicine nursing staff. Identification of irregularities from baseline measurements and immediate coordination, intervention, and treatment under the patient’s physician’s directives are completed in real-time.
“Rather than integrating an off-the-shelf remote patient monitoring system, Waveny’s Skilled Nursing Facility Telemedicine Program is a state-of-the-art health monitoring and patient engagement technology with unique features, that, to the best of our knowledge and research, is not currently being deployed in another telemedicine or telehealth platform,” said Terry Henry, Waveny’s Chief Sales, Marketing and Advancement Officer. “We are pleased to acknowledge that it can now be duplicated in similar facilities.”
Waveny’s bluetooth-enabled platform allows the patient’s physicians, specialists, and extenders to videoconference with the patient and their dedicated Waveny nurse, while simultaneously monitoring vital signs and accessing their electronic medical record and history. This enhances their health professionals’ ability to diagnose changes in condition, and deliver dynamic, remote patient-centered care.
Because the technology and components are seamlessly integrated into what appears to be a normal bedside interactive, flat and touch screen television, the patient can watch regular television channels or stream movies and educational material or make phone calls, listen to music, ring for their nurse, or videoconference friends and loved ones anywhere in the world through the highly intuitive interface.
Patients now have the ability to actually see and interface with their loved one and their physician via videoconferencing, providing significant comfort, reassurance and a greater acceptance and visual validation of their loved one’s mental and physical condition.
SUMMARY OF WAVENY’s TELEMEDICINE’s BENEFITS:
- Innovative: Seamless integration of advanced beside functionality into an intuitive user interface to optimize patient convenience, and clinical assessments, decision making and treatment protocols;
- Sensitive: Real-time notification of major changes in condition or prolonged incremental variances;
- Secure & Compliant: Delivers detailed & continuous HIPAA-compliant data with stable, secure connectivity;
- Accessible & Responsive: Eliminates delays in notifying physician, specialist, or physician extenders;
- Efficient: Reduces unnecessary hospital admissions or ED visits and readmissions;
- Flexible: Ensures tight collaboration with range of clinicians including primary, intensive, emergent, etc.
- Reassuring: Promotes family & resident peace of mind through seamless face-to-face access, which has been shown to mitigate isolation, depression, anxiety and behavioral issues.
