“Good morning. It is now time to record your vital signs,” says the pleasant recorded voice. “Please sit down in a chair in front of the monitor.”

Each day, a select group of Central Iowa home-care patients hears these prompts as they use a medical telemonitoring device that resembles a large clock radio. In addition to asking several yes-or-no questions about how they’re feeling, the device also assists them in measuring their blood pressure and the oxygen level in their blood.

The wireless system then transmits the data to a computer at InTrust Home Health Care Services’ downtown Des Moines office, where a registered nurse reviews it to determine whether an in-person home visit is needed.   The system, which the Iowa Health System affiliate began using in September, represents the future of in-home health care, said Keith Coady, InTrust’s clinical manager.

“This system enables us to deliver cost-effective, high-quality care to our clients by providing them with daily real-time clinical information regarding trends in their patients’ health status,” Coady said. “It’s a new model of care we’re embracing wholeheartedly.”

It’s one piece of a statewide telemonitoring program being developed by the Iowa Chronic Care Consortium, a partnership of public, private and non-profit organizations focused on providing more proactive treatment for chronic illnesses such as congestive heart failure and diabetes, particularly in rural communities. The consortium’s overall goal is to reach 1,000 home-care patients through telemonitoring technology within the next two years.

Mercy Health Network, which, like Iowa Health System, is a member of the consortium, has employed a lower-tech, telephone-based home health monitoring system made by Pharos Innovations for the past three years. Mercy’s system, in which patients use a touch-tone phone or computer to answer yes-or-no questions about their health and report their weight, has reduced hospitalizations among monitored heart patients by about 85 percent each year it’s been used.

Through the consortium, the two health-care providers will be working cooperatively to determine which of the two systems provides the best care, said Dave Hickman, director of clinical integration for Mercy Health Network.

“We’re really interested in seeing whether having additional clinical equipment in the home improves outcomes or not,” Hickman said.   “It’s not in a competitive environment; it’s in an all-teach, all-learn environment,” he said. “It’s to learn and duplicate best practices across the state. Our purpose in doing this is to improve the health of people with congestive heart failure through cooperation.”

InTrust has deployed about 25 of its monitoring devices, made by Wisconsin-based HomMed LLC, in patients’ homes within about a 50-mile radius of Des Moines. The home health-care company is footing the cost of the machines, which retail for approximately $9,000 each, and is providing monitoring at no cost to the patients.

The company has also received a $30,000 grant from the Iowa Chronic Care Consortium to provide the equipment to 10 additonal heart patients in Central Iowa and monitor them for one year.

InTrust estimates its system will cost about $350 per month per patient when it begins charging for the service. In comparison, Mercy’s system costs about $30 per month per patient.   Neither system is yet covered by health insurers in Iowa. Both companies hope that will change within the next year or two.

“By taking a patient’s vital signs on a daily basis, we can catch irregularities before they become full-fledged health problems,” Coady said. “We can then send a nurse to a patient’s home or, based on the daily data, work directly with the patient’s physician to adjust medication and diet regimens.”   Both health-care systems plan to roll out telemonitoring programs for diabetes patients in March, Hickman said.