Kettering Health Adds Digital Support for Heart Failure Patients
To improve the care experience for patients living with heart failure, Ohio-based Kettering Health has partnered with digital health company Story Health.
Nonprofit Kettering Health is made up of 14 medical centers and more than 120 outpatient locations throughout western Ohio, as well as Kettering Health Medical Group—with more than 700 board-certified providers
For Kettering Health patients who opt into the program, Story Health will collaborate with Kettering Health providers for virtual, personalized care through medication management, home heart health monitoring, and clinical care team support to help reduce readmission rates and increase provider capacity.
Story Health says that its care teams proactively engage patients and are available by text, phone or video calls to help patients navigate their condition between appointments. The company added that its coaches review daily health data supplied by Kettering Health patients to inform any necessary medicine changes, provide education and symptom management, and troubleshoot prescription issues that can arise between patient appointments. Kettering Health will also enroll patients in the Story Health program after being discharged from the hospital, to drive higher engagement in post-discharge follow-up care.
“Heart failure care at Kettering Health combines expertise, cutting-edge technology and specialized care to offer the best experience for our patients. Our partnership with Story Health will extend that care to our patients virtually when they are between appointments to help not only with daily tracking and medicine management in the short term, but ultimately to reduce hospitalizations and improve our heart failure patients’ quality of life,” said Jody Underwood, Kettering Health’s executive director of population health, in a statement.
This year, Healthcare Innovation has detailed some of the other partnerships Story Health has launched with major health systems. In August 2024, we wrote about Utah-based Intermountain Health’s expansion of its relationship with the company following a pilot program launched in January 2023 for patients with a new heart failure diagnosis.
Using Story Health’s program, which utilizes a virtual and asynchronous care model, Intermountain Health patients enrolled in the pilot program experienced a significant clinical improvement, including an increase in achieving medication optimization – with 80% of those medication changes handled without a clinic visit. Additionally, they saw a lower readmission rate over the course of the program (14.5% vs. 18% national average).
In a February 2024 interview with Healthcare Innovation, Kirk Garratt, M.D., medical director of the Center for Heart & Vascular Health at ChristianaCare, and Story Health CEO Tom Stanis spoke about their collaboration to improve health outcomes for patients living with hypertension and heart failure in Wilmington, Del.
The partnership uses Story Health’s digital hybrid platform that provides patients with a dedicated health coach to ensure their care plan is followed and treatment goals are achieved. Through this approach, ChristianaCare said it has been able to address some health disparities, with a significant improvement in the number of Black patients adhering to prescribed doses of guideline-directed medical therapy for heart failure.
