AMC Health Highlights Telehealth's Positive Impact on Veterans' Care

NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 2014--This National Veterans Day, AMC Health is raising awareness about the critical role telehealth is playing in providing veterans access to quality care.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) national telehealth program is the largest of its kind in the world, providing telehealth services to nearly 700,000 veterans during fiscal year 2014. This represents approximately 12 percent of the overall veteran population enrolled in VA healthcare and accounts for more than 2 million telehealth encounters. More than half of those served were veterans in rural areas with limited access to VA healthcare facilities. 

For the past 12 years, AMC Health, a leading provider of real-time patient management solutions, has provided remote patient monitoring solutions to healthcare systems including Geisinger Health Plan, New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation and HealthPartners of Minnesota. The benefits of telehealth, including preventing hospitalizations, reducing hospital readmissions and controlling chronic illness, have been chronicled in VA telehealth studies and have also been supported by non-government customers' peer-reviewed publications. The impact of AMC Health solutions have been demonstrated in the following:

• Medical Care, January 2012: Geisinger Health Plan reduced all-cause 30-day hospital readmissions for high-risk patients by 20 percent by adding interactive voice response calls to their care management outreach.
• Journal of Managed Care Medicine, November 2012: New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation combined personalized case management and real-time patient management solutions to enable Medicaid patients with poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes reduce HbA1c levels by an average of 1.8 points.
• Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA), July 2013: When Health Partners of Minnesota added telehealth and pharmacist management to their usual care for hypertension, 71.2 percent of the patients participating in the program had their blood pressure well-controlled after 12 months, versus 52.8 percent of the control group.
• Population Health Management, December 2014 (print): Geisinger Health Plan significantly reduced hospital readmissions and cost of care for patients with heart failure. Delivered a 3.3 ROI — for every $1 spent to implement this program, GHP saved about $3.30, which translated to 11 percent per patient per month between 2008 and 2012.

"AMC Health salutes our veterans and we are grateful for their service," said Nesim Bildirici, president and CEO of AMC Health. "We applaud the VA for its leadership role in telehealth, and the recognition that the continued growth of telehealth is needed in order to efficiently and effectively deliver healthcare services, wherever veterans' needs may be."

About AMC Health 

AMC Health is a leading provider of customized, scalable "real-time" patient management solutions. The company assists organizations serving individuals with chronic health conditions or transitioning from hospital to home. AMC Health's solution consists of patient engagement, health monitoring and coaching, care coordination tools with analytics embedded within the solution. The benefits of the AMC Health telehealth solution in improving patient outcomes and quality of care, as well as decreasing healthcare costs have been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals. AMC Health is headquartered in New York City. For more information, please see our ad in the special edition of USA Today on November 11, 2014 or visitwww.amchealth.com.