Ocala, Florida

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Heart of Florida Health Center Customer Story

How Heart of Florida improved hypertension outcomes for its underinsured populations with remote patient monitoring

“When we can provide the equipment at no cost to the patient, this allows us to serve uninsured and underinsured patients. The cellular option has been easier for patients who do not have smartphones, and patients who are not as comfortable with technology.”

Summary

Heart of Florida Health Center is a federally qualified health center serving Marion County, an area of Florida that has experienced an 11% population increase in the last ten years.  HFHC has also grown, now operating seven clinics throughout the county that provide integrated primary care, maternity, dental, pharmacy, and behavioral health services, including telehealth and community-based outreach. In 2021, HFHC served over 28,000 patients, logging 88,000 patient visits. Although the county is rapidly developing, about a third of the population still lives in rural areas and more than half of HFHC patients are at or below the federal poverty level. HFHC is committed to finding ways to overcome these challenges and provide high-quality preventive care to the community.

Heart of Florida Health Center

Challenge

Carali McLean, the Director of Quality, Risk and Compliance at the Heart of Florida Center and her Team were faced with the challenge of wanting to help improve their patients’ ability to manage hypertension. They learned about Remote Patient Monitoring programs, and had not previously implemented them at the Center. When Heart of Florida received funding due to their status as a  Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), they had the opportunity to implement their first remote hypertension management program.

Program Highlights

“HealthSnap offers a structured, easy-to-follow implementation process for RPM and their team has consistently been highly responsive and helpful to our providers and management.” 

– Carali McLean, Director of Quality, Risk and Compliance, Heart of Florida Center

In addition to ease of implementation and responsiveness, the Heart of Florida team also found that the equipment was easy for their patients to use, and the team was pleased that the website and data transmission worked seamlessly. In terms of choosing HealthSnap’s RPM program, Heart of Florida also felt that compared to other RPM companies, HealthSnap was cost-effective and easy for patients to adopt.

Results

In terms of outcomes, so far, Heart of Florida has seen an approximately 2% improvement in Uniform Data System (UDS) scores for controlled hypertension compared to last year.

Carali shared that patients are able to utilize the blood pressure cuffs without trouble and they transmit data successfully. Heart of Florida’s patient population includes individuals living in rural areas and the team hopes that implementing HealthSnap’s RPM program will help them to expand their ability to engage those patients in preventive care in a way that reduces barriers of time and transportation.

Outcomes Data

  • 68 patients began the program with uncontrolled hypertension and 19 were in a controlled range, according to the average of their first 7 readings. 
  • 19 patients (27.9%)  previously categorized as uncontrolled are now are in a controlled range, according to their last 7 readings. 
  • For patients who began with uncontrolled hypertension, SBP average decrease was 6.2 mmHg (73.5% of patients improved SBP) and DBP average decrease is 5.7 mmHg (79.4% of patients improved DBP).

This includes all patients with a transmission index over 30% and who have been enrolled in the program at least 60 days.