Grant helps rural St. John's patients get health care

The $500,000 grant will allow patients to get check ups without leaving home

April 15, 2011|by Jay Scherder | jscherder@ky3.com

CASSVILLE, Mo -- The future of health care coming to a rural community near you. St. John's was recently awarded a half a million dollar grant to help bring doctors straight into the homes of patients without anyone ever having to step outside.

Cassville and Mountain View and a few places in Arkansas are going to benefit from the telemedicine grant. It provides technology that allows doctors to monitor their patients miles away. The program will soon be up and running and for those that have quite a drive to get to their doctor it's a bit of relief.

For AnnaMae Ellstrom getting to her doctor in Cassville isn't always easy. "It's 13 miles," AnnaMae said, "but I live in the country. I have two go across two low water bridges." Heavy rain, snow, and cold temperatures can all be paralyzing. "If the weather is really bad," she said, "you don't get out."

Thanks to new technology and a new $500,000 grant awarded to St. John's Hospital, she won't have to leave home to make sure she's doing okay. "It changes our being reactive to a proactive medical care," said St. John's Clinic-Cassville Physician Dr. Jaime Zengotita.

Patients will the most chronic ailments--like diabetes and heart disease--will soon have a device that monitors them at home. "[It will] monitor their blood pressure, monitor their blood sugar, monitor their weight," said Dr. Zengotita.

That information is then sent electronically to the patient's doctor or doctors wherever they may be. "Not only allow me to be able to look at those numbers," Dr. Zengotita said, "but allow your cardiologist to look at them sitting in Springfield or Joplin to look at those numbers as well."

For AnnaMae it could be a lifesaver because her blood pressure fluctuates at dangerous levels. "Once I was air-lifted out because they couldn't get it under control," she said, "the second time I was taken by ambulance."

"This is the next step to what the future is bringing to us," Dr. Zengotita said.

Embracing the future while still holding onto a little bit of the past. "I compare this to an old time doctor who came to your house and visit you," Dr. Zengotita said.

St. John's hopes that this will up and going this summer. AnnaMae is very excited to get her monitoring system in place as are a lot of patients in the Cassville area.

Research has shows that behaviors actually change when people know that someone is paying attention to them. Just tracking patients with high blood pressure alone could potentially save $100 billion a year in unnecessary health care costs.

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