Heart failure clinic opens at OLBH

March 03--RUSSELL -- Heart disease patients at Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital now have improved access to the physicians and services they need to better handle life after diagnosis with the hospital's new heart failure clinic.

When a patient is asked to make drastic lifestyle changes to handle heart disease, the next steps from the hospital to home can be difficult, nurse practitioner Debbie Martin explained.

"They have to change everything about the way they eat, lowering salt and sodium intake, weighing themselves daily, keeping a record, learning to read labels," she said. "It can be really tough for them to adjust to."

But even though the nurses meet resistance with some patients on these routine adjustments, they want to educate each patient as to why it is important and how to eventually become independent with medicine and care planning.

Through the attention clinicians gives the individual patients, personal relationship are forged, creating a more comfortable atmosphere for voicing concerns or questions.

"The clinic is mostly about education," said Tiffany Malloy, R.N. "It takes a lot of time to sit down with the patient and explain to them about how they need to exercise, make dietary changes and why it's all important."

From the planning stages of construction for the clinic until opening day took about a year, said Brent Kimball, director of business and service line delivery for OLBH.

The heart-failure clinic opened in February, which is designated as Heart Health Month.

With a deep red color scheme throughout the lobby, labs, patient rooms and offices, it would be easy to infer the color choice was consciously a move to visually represent cardiology, but Martin said the red came from a mix of favorite colors from the staff and modeled after Dr. Michele Friday, a cardiovascular disease physician.

Three staffers man the clinic from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, including Samantha Bowen, registration clerk, and Malloy and Martin, who see patients.

Cardiologist Yogendra Prasad, whose office is connected to the clinic, is readily available for medical advice or patients' questions.

Patients admitted to the facility were either sent for a follow-up after being discharged from the hospital or referred to the clinic by a general practitioner.

OLBH is the first hospital owned by Bon Secours Health System to have a heart-failure clinic.

Martin said creating the clinic has been a dream of hers since she worked in the vitality center, a floor below.

"We understand that money is tight right now with added expenses in health-care reform," Malloy said. "But what is nice about OLBH is it knows that what we're doing here in the clinic really makes a difference in patient care and believes in us enough to give us our heart-failure clinic."

For more information about the clinic, call (606) 833-6397.

LANA BELLAMY can be reached at lbellamy@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.

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