The five questions families & discharge planners ask first

Summit Cardiac is a different category than Medicare home health. Our model pairs ICU/CCU-credentialed in-person RN care with continuous remote patient monitoring — Masimo SpO2, KardiaMobile 6L ECG, daily weights, and clinician-led medication reconciliation on every visit.

Medicare home-health visits are short, episodic, and typically staffed by generalist nurses covering many service lines simultaneously. Summit Cardiac's program is cardiac-only: full 8–12-week recovery window with daily RN check-ins during the stabilization phase, physician-supervised escalation under cardiologist oversight, and proactive intervention before a setback becomes a hospitalization.

The clinical target is dramatic: 30-day readmission rate below 8%, against the CMS national benchmark of 17–20% for cardiac patients. RPM-only post-discharge programs reduce readmissions from ~20% to ~14%; Summit Cardiac is built to push lower.

Summit Cardiac's program runs $3,500 to $5,000 per patient per month, depending on acuity and program length. That number covers a dedicated ICU/CCU-credentialed RN visit plus continuous monitoring for 30 days.

A single avoidable 30-day heart-failure readmission averages $14,000 to $20,000 in direct hospital cost. One prevented readmission covers roughly three months of full program cost.

Summit Cardiac is a private-pay service. We do not bill Medicare, Medi-Cal, or any commercial insurance carrier. This is an intentional choice: it allows us to maintain the one-nurse-per-patient model and the visit frequency clinical outcomes require, rather than what insurance reimburses.

• HSA / FSA funds — many patients use HSA or FSA dollars to cover program costs. Submit your Summit Cardiac receipts to your administrator.
• Long-term-care insurance — some policies partially reimburse. Eligibility depends on your specific plan and your carrier's clinical-review process.
• Out-of-network reimbursement — patients occasionally submit receipts to their commercial carrier for partial out-of-network reimbursement. Coverage varies by plan; we do not bill the carrier on your behalf.

This direct-to-patient model also means zero budget impact on hospitals — no PO, no contract routing, no purchase order. Discharge planners refer based on clinical fit; Summit Cardiac handles patient billing independently.

Honest answer: Summit Cardiac is at pilot stage. We track outcomes per patient — readmission events, ER utilization, medication-adherence rates, time-to-stable-baseline — and publish case-level results as hospital partnerships mature.

What we can prove today is the depth of clinical training behind every patient interaction:

• 28 years of bedside cardiac nursing across post-surgical, acutely decompensating, and chronic-cardiac populations
• Majority of career in ICU/CCU settings — continuous hemodynamic monitoring, vasoactive drip titration, post-cardiac-surgery chest-tube and sternal assessment, ventilator-to-wean transitions
• Physician-supervised — cardiologist oversight (Dr. Madyoon, MD) across every care plan
• Hospital-grade equipment in the home — Masimo MightySat pulse oximeter, KardiaMobile 6L ECG, Welch Allyn ProBP 3400, daily weights

That is the clinical caliber the program is built around. Full 30-day-readmission-rate data will be published as the first hospital-partnered enrollment windows complete.

Same-week intake is the standard. For patients already discharged, a Summit Cardiac RN can be in the home within 24 to 48 hours of intake, with chart review beginning immediately on referral receipt.

• Already discharged? Submit a Patient Inquiry at /intake or use the provider Referral form at /refer. Intake call within one business day. Home visit within 24–48 hours of intake confirmation.
• Still in the hospital? Pre-discharge referral is strongly preferred for complex cases — CHF decompensation, post-CABG sternal precautions, post-valve-replacement anticoagulation, post-MI risk-factor modification. The 24 hours before discharge are the right window for chart review and medication reconciliation, so the home visit begins with a complete picture rather than a cold start.
• Provider or discharge planner referring? Use the 12-field form at /refer. We confirm receipt the same business day and the RN reaches out to the patient within 24 hours.