An Extra Level To Restoring Good Health

Since March 2024, CHRISTUS St. Mary’s Clinic has offered a new service line for those patients with serious chronic conditions. Registered nurse Edgar Chay is providing follow-along care to ensure patients are managing their conditions.

During the last 14 months, Chay has had 1,142 nurse visits. “Some are by phone, and some are in person,” said Chay. “The first visit is always in person to allow for training for blood pressure and blood sugar machines. Once I know they know how to use their machines then I can trust the numbers they give me over the phone.”

This extra level of care is restoring patients back to good health. “For those with severe high blood pressure, we are seeing at least 80% of patients that have improved their readings to less than 140/90, when their original readings were 200/100.  For diabetics, our goal is to achieve fasting blood sugar tests of less than 150. We focus on A1C as well, but the faster way for us to know is doing daily blood sugars.  The people we are really proud of are those who came with an A1C of 15.1, and after six months we are seeing 7.5 or 7.8. That’s when you can see this is working.”

Prior to this service, the clinic had patients who were never coming back for follow up appointments. “For my diabetics, sometimes they weren’t even picking up their insulin from the pharmacy or they couldn’t afford it. So now they have to go through me to get the $35 insulin coupon and to teach them how to do it the right way. We don’t give refills on the insulin to ensure they come back in for a follow-up.”

Patients are instructed to return in a week or follow up by phone.  “If I haven’t heard from them in two weeks, I will call them. Then in two weeks versus three months, we can find out what is happening and address it.”

For clinic medical director Sister Rosanne Popp, M.D., the service is making a major impact on patient health. “It is letting us practice medicine better.”