SeniorBridge Announces TeleCare Management Offering

This month, SeniorBridge and VRI, a leading provider of in-home health monitoring systems, unveiled a service that combines remote vital sign monitoring with face-to-face oversight from professional geriatric care managers.

SeniorBridge’s core care management service in which specially trained nurses and social workers across the country provide ongoing face-to-face assessments along with care in the home and 24-7 phone availability, will now be supplemented with phone monitoring by VRI.

Participating seniors will receive a device that plugs into their home telephone jack which will assess and report their daily vital statistics such as blood pressure and weight. If vital signs are either not received or outside of a normal range defined for them, a specially trained VRI call center representative will contact the senior to obtain additional information then provide a comprehensive update to the SeniorBridge care manager, who will in turn make timely care decisions.

The program will reduce hospitalizations of chronically ill seniors by identifying warning signs early and identifying solutions to address medical, functional and psychosocial needs. Additionally, by empowering seniors to be involved in their own health assessments and providing monthly reports of their vital statistics, the program will help to improve health literacy.

"The VRI-enabled SeniorBridge TeleCare Management program is our latest effort to address the changing needs of health plans, health professionals and seniors in light of recently passed healthcare reform," said Eric C. Rackow, MD, President and CEO of SeniorBridge and immediate past president of NYU Hospital. "By empowering health professionals with accurate vital information necessary to make timely care decisions, we expect to build on our success in improving health outcomes while reducing cost of care."

SeniorBridge’s unique care management model, reduces hospitalizations by more than 80 percent and emergency room admissions by more than 90 percent as compared to Medicare beneficiaries.

"Over the last twenty years, VRI has been demonstrating that our technology is effective in identifying problems and patterns in patients with complex chronic conditions - an important first step in reducing hospitalizations," said Andy Schoonover, President of VRI Telemonitoring. "The opportunity to combine our data-collection capabilities with SeniorBridge’s proven model of in-home oversight and coordination opens the door to exciting possibilities for seniors who will benefit from expanded options to address their needs as well as health plans who will see reduced cost of overall care."

The SeniorBridge TeleCare Management program builds on SeniorBridge's heritage of integrating technology into the care of seniors including web-based electronic health records and a SeniorBridge Skype program that allows remote family members to participate via video-conferencing in seniors’ doctor appointments and to make online social visits.