Amedisys Unveils Heart Failure Program During American Heart Month

BATON ROUGE, La., Feb. 01, 2017 -- In honor of American Heart Month, Amedisys (Nasdaq:AMED), a leading home health, hospice and personal care company, is announcing promising preliminary results from an ambitious new pilot project that targets heart failure and plans to roll out the program companywide in February.

According to the CDC, some 85.6 million Americans live with cardiovascular diseases, with an estimated 5.7 million suffering from heart failure in particular. Heart failure is the only major cardiovascular disease on the rise, and causes more hospitalizations than all forms of cancer combined.

The Amedisys Heart Failure program, a multidisciplinary specialty initiative in home health, currently involves more than 300 heart failure patients at 14 Amedisys care centers throughout Alabama. Its unique protocol, drawn from data gathered by Amedisys and companywide focus groups, is designed expressly to deliver the best clinical results.

The overall “Heart Suite” program now underway at Amedisys also encompasses new care protocols for two other diagnoses – Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) and Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG).

The heart failure program aims for clinicians to educate – and ultimately empower – patients and their families to manage their condition at home in order to help maintain wellness and foster independence. Patients learn the clinical value of weighing themselves regularly, monitoring for symptoms and documenting progress on a checklist that then promotes effective patient-doctor communications.

The program is designed to lower hospital readmission rates, improve functional status and decrease shortness of breath – and, more broadly, to drive higher quality of life, lower costs and longer lives.

“The biggest advantage of our heart failure program is that patients and family members learn what to do when they see symptoms,” says Susan Sender, Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer at Amedisys.

Shannon Abbott, Vice President of Clinical Programs at Amedisys, heads up the Heart Failure Program for Amedisys and oversees the pilot. 

“We’re already seeing success in our new pilot,” Sender says. “Recently, the wife of a heart failure patient who was educated through our program noticed that her husband had gained three pounds in a single day. Her call to an Amedisys care center brought him immediate medical attention and an eight-pound weight loss within two days. That quick action against a major warning sign – sudden weight gain – prevented a visit to the emergency room, readmission to the hospital and enabled him to stay at home.”

About Amedisys

Amedisys, Inc. is a leading healthcare at home Company delivering personalized home health, hospice and personal care. Amedisys is focused on delivering the care that is best for our patients, whether that is home-based personal care; recovery and rehabilitation after an operation or injury; care focused on empowering them to manage a chronic disease; or hospice care at the end of life. More than 2,200 hospitals and 61,900 physicians nationwide have chosen Amedisys as a partner in post-acute care. Founded in 1982, headquartered in Baton Rouge, LA with an executive office in Nashville, TN, Amedisys is a publicly held company. With more than 16,000 employees, in 427 care centers in 34 states, Amedisys is dedicated to delivering the highest quality of care to the doorsteps of more than 340,000 patients in need every year. For more information about the Company, please visit: www.amedisys.com.

Contact:

Kendra Kimmons
Managing Director of Communications
225-299-3708
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