VA pushes TeleHealth

Almost every time G is at the VA, someone asks if we are interested in getting TeleHealth. I never knew what this was, only something which monitored your health via phone line.

As we don't have a land line in the house, we could not access this. G never really wanted it, he is always resistant to any type of monitoring, just his nature. Well, low and behold someone phoned the other day to once again offer us this service, and told us we would access via the internet, which we do have.

So I agreed to go meet with her and get the equipment yesterday, after the meeting with the surgeon.

When I got there, she showed me the device, and said the program was set up for "palliative care". I replied "he's not on palliative care", then she said "oh, it's for CHF (congestive heart failure)", to which I replied "well, no one has given us that diagnosis. Which Dr. said this?". So, by now she decided to look it up rather than talking off the top of her head. She claimed the attending Dr. from the last admission ordered TeleHealth, and he had put down palliative care.

I didn't press her on that point.

The attending Dr. in the hospital doesn't know G, and I am sure part of what they are judged on is how many of their discharge patients they get put on this program.

I know if someone were living alone it would be a good program. One is suppose to turn on the machine each day, answer some basic questions about how you feel, and once a week take your blood pressure, with a device which comes with the machine, and which will download the data and send it to the VA.

Like I said, if someone is living alone this would be great, and I think in the future all seniors would benefit from using such a system.

G says he doesn't want it, but I learned that the woman who is responsible for this system can help us do things, like send messages to Drs., etc.

The VA is suppose to be setting up a "messaging" function for their patients, but this is not yet active. One can reorder prescriptions at the moment., but that's about it.

Anyway, I can't set up this device because my modem doesn't have 2 input slots. So that's our excuse for now.

I have wanted to monitor G's blood pressure more closely, but am having troubles with the blood pressure machine. It works OK on me, so will try again on him.

G said his blood pressure was so low after dialysis yesterday he had to wait to leave. It was 85 over something, and his almost never drops below 100, even after dialysis, so this is something new.

Maybe those pills are working.

I am going to wait until G sees his primary care, or maybe Dr. B., who he sees next week, so see what they have to say about this "TeleHealth".