Hines VA Hospital program to be adopted nationwide
Department of Veterans Affairs medical officials visited Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital on Jan. 10, to learn new techniques used by the hospital’s podiatry service.
The group of doctors, nurses, and physical therapists learned best practices for a new remote temperature monitoring mat prescribed to nearly 400 Hines VA Veterans at high risk of limb amputation.
“The purpose of the site visit was to demonstrate how we are running our program as well as the barriers and good things we have found,” said Dr. Rodney Stuck, Hines VA podiatrist. “Hines VA is considered a site of excellence and one of several VA hospitals at the forefront of using this groundbreaking technology.”
The RTM mat, which is manufactured by Podimetrics Inc., is a new innovation podiatrists use to monitor patients between visits. According to Stuck, the mat evaluates the temperature of the soles of veterans’ feet to detect prolonged temperature changes.
“This is especially important for those who are at high risk for amputation,” said Dr. Jeffrey Robbins, VA’s national podiatric medical director of Podiatry. “Current research suggests that we can identify areas of potential breakdown weeks before there would be any clinical evidence, allowing us to make timely interventions to reduce the threat identified in the scans.”
Robbins said this program, like any new program, requires more resources to provide the level of supervision needed to address the increasing number of escalations to the providers.
“The providers are still seeing their full patient loads in addition to this program and medical centers will need to allocate resources accordingly,” said Robbins.
Robbins credits Hines VA for being one of the few innovative centers to begin using the mats on eligible patients.
“Hines VA has remarkable leadership who look for ways to be innovative on behalf of America’s veterans,” said Robbins. “They have been supportive of Dr. Stuck and his team and provided the resources to initiate and maintain this program.”
According to Stuck, VA plans to expand Hines VA’s RTM program to other VA facilities nationwide.