CATCH Program Partnership for COPD Telehealth

Healthie is excited to announce its partnership with the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease [COPD] Access to Community Health (CATCH) program at the Ventura County Health Care Agency. This partnership allows the CATCH program to utilize Healthie’s innovative telehealth technology to improve community care for patients with COPD.

The $4 million CMS Innovation Grant-funded CATCH program was established based on the 2013 Global Initiative for COPD guidelines for chronic care. The program aims to better coordinate interdisciplinary community-based care for patients with COPD. Patients recruited to the CATCH program work with primary care providers and specialists across clinical, psychosocial, and environmental disciplines, including a registered dietitian nutritionist, Anna Mason.

We got the opportunity to speak with Anna, who describes this educational grant-funded program as “essential” to help patients previously diagnosed with COPD, or with risk factors for COPD, gain access to care they need, including smoking cessation resources.

Erica Jain, founder and CEO at Healthie, stated “Healthie is excited to be a part of the excellent care delivered by the Ventura County Health Care Agency. We look forward to expanding the ease of care for patients with COPD because nutrition is such an important concern for this population.”

Good nutritional care is essential for COPD patients, so having access to virtual care through Healthie’s telehealth platform will enhance the continuity of care for these patients. Dr. Chris Landon oversees the interdisciplinary team, ensuring patients receive proper care, and is a huge proponent of telehealth to bolster patient compliance and improve health outcomes. Now, Dr. Landon is excited to bring a nutrition-specific telehealth platform to CATCH in order to provide patients with an even better experience. Specifically, the CATCH program will use Healthie’s telehealth platform for HIPAA-compliant video conferencing appointments to increase convenience, improve patient compliance, and track patient outcomes. For patients with COPD who have difficulty making appointments, telehealth provides more flexibility.

CATCH program patients will also benefit from innovative telehealth features in the Healthie mobile app, including secure messaging, visual diet logging, educational document sharing, and tracking of custom metrics set by providers. These features increase accountability, self-monitoring, and improve health outcomes. Anna stated, “motivated patients will love the messaging feature to increase interactions with me [the dietitian] between their initial consultation and follow up appointment, which are sometimes six months apart.” She continued to say, “For patients who do not feel well or have a tendency to cancel in-person appointments, video conferencing provides an alternative with the same level of care.”

We asked Anna how she thinks telehealth is changing the field of nutrition to which she said, “It opens up opportunities for dietitians and patients. Dietitians in leading hospitals will be able to access patients in remote areas, while patients who live far from a top hospital will be able to receive high quality care without the expense of traveling. Telehealth provides the opportunity for dietitians to expand our reach past our immediate physical location. Plus, as more nutrition services receive insurance coverage, telehealth is the future for preventative health.”

The CATCH program, through the Ventura County Health Care Agency, joins other community organizations like WIC and Baraka Community Wellness that leverage Healthie to reduce nutrition disparities and improve outcomes in at-risk communities.