Announcing New Cardiology Partnership

Just in time for February’s Heart Health Month, SKLD Livonia announces a new partnership with Dr. Mijad Qazi, DO, Cardiologist at Beaumont Hospital. Dr. Qazi will provide cardiac care for patients at SKLD with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). The program is the first of its kind in the Metro Detroit area, where a cardiologist treats facility residents on site twice each week. 

As part of this program, SKLD Livonia is now able to provide in house diagnostics and draw STAT cardiac labs as well. In addition, patients and their families are given additional education about proper management of CHF, setting them up for a more successful transition home than at a typical rehab facility. Heart failure is the second most common reason for hospital admission, after sepsis. Avoiding readmission for these high risk patients once they are released from the hospital is crucial.

Shorter hospital stays due to cost cutting and insurance rules means that more patients are being discharged sooner than in the past and require continuous care before going home. The model of transitioning to a sub acute care facility like SKLD is one that is becoming increasingly popular. Dr. Qazi expects it will be more common to provide hospital-grade treatment within sub acute care facilities, but for now, SKLD is ahead of the trend. 

Rita Daywalt-Conley, SKLD Transitional Care Liaison for the Metro Detroit area, is emphatic about the program’s ability to help patients avoid hospital readmission and accelerate their pace on the road to recovery.

“I enjoy building exclusive partnerships and programs with experienced physicians who are excellent in their field. It allows us to provide the best possible care for our patients.” 

The new cardiac program is one of several SKLD partnerships with area doctors and hospitals, including a high acuity wound care program at Livonia led by a dually certified vascular/trauma surgeon and staffed with an advanced wound care team.

Dr. Qazi rounds with patients at SKLD with CHF twice a week, in addition to the primary care physician who sees patients. He also coordinates with the care team so that therapy, nursing and dietary teams are all working collaboratively to get the patients back to baseline. The goal, he says is to guide patients toward a “heart healthy lifestyle with goal directed therapy, and to maintain an appropriate diet for cardiovascular maintenance.” 

“In most nursing facilities there’s no coherent, unified plan to monitor these patients,” says Dr. Qazi. “There’s no pathway or protocol specifically for prevention of heart failure. It makes sense in the future to have nursing facilities partner with cardiac care.”

Dr. Qazi says each patient’s condition is different, so it’s important to tailor and monitor the medication within the sub acute care facility. All CHF patients have strict guidelines for fluid and sodium intake to prevent fluid retention. Monitoring their fluids at consistent intervals is essential to preventing a recurrence of heart failure symptoms. 

In some cases CHF can be extremely complicated, making prevention of recurrence quite difficult, says Dr. Qazi. Some patients, regardless of the level of care provided, will still have fluid retention. This is when the team has to be really aggressive to strictly monitor the signs of fluid retention. Key to avoiding readmission is catching early signs of recurrence and addressing it immediately.

“Once it gets to a certain point, it’s hard to reverse this at home or in an outpatient setting. What we’re helping with is monitoring for the early signs and triggers.”

This proactive approach to CHF is a more aggressive treatment plan for heart patients than any other skilled rehabilitation facility offers in Metro Detroit.

Once the program is fully implemented at SKLD Livonia, Daywalt says they’ll advance it out to the other SKLD facilities with the goal of providing the best possible post hospital cardiac care in Metro Detroit.

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