Setting off by noon for annual Super Bowl followed by trip to Florida for cousins’ dinner at Flo’s pad.
Checked in with UTMers. Packed. Left Hudson by noon. Arrived at Esther’s by 3.
Saw The Favorite at Landmark. Disappointing ending.
Then dinner. 
Over-rated food.
Temp at physical therapy 7:30am.
Worked on UTM things then up to CMH for mtg w RPM team. Ron Pope appeared late then only for 15 minutes. Lasted til noon.
HAL meeting of Space Committee. EC, MB, Gary Sheffer, Ken
Wexelman put off telecon about Lipner proposal.
Virtually all day on UTM – write up first proposal for Wexelman. Talked with Sam about email campaign.
HAL Program Committee mtg. Evaluation Brenda and Kimberly with Pamela Badilla. She was late as usual.
Met with Seth. Funny conversation about connection between Fyre and Trump.Included Andy king who owned buildings on Front St and for whom i had created a business model five or six years ago. He rooked Brandon, too. Reviewed Lipner proposal. Seth had a couple of good ideas.
Ole at Verdigris. More good ideas. Rushed home to make revisions and get it off to Wexelman.
Tennis. Only lost my serve once.
3 degrees when I left TT.
Sent this photo to Jesse and Anna.
UTMH meeting with RPM team at Columbia Memorial Hospital.
We are pleased to announce the installation of “Bridges Past and Present: Crossing the Hudson River,” an exhibition of the work of artist Otto Miranda. This exhibition consists of 63 watercolors of bridges from the 1800’s to the present that all pass over the Hudson River from New York City to the river’s beginning in the Adirondack Mountains at Lake Henderson’s Tear of the Clouds. The bridges represented include vehicle, railroad, pedestrian, and even a troop bridges. They will be on exhibit in the library’s Community Room from Friday, January 5, until Wednesday, February 28.
The artist, Otto Miranda, has been a watercolor artist for 18 years. He moved to Columbia County in 2009, where the wonderful mountains and the Hudson River inspired him to take on this project. He spent 15 months researching and then traveled with his wife Dale, and her GPS, from the river’s beginning to the lower end. Together they photographed many of the existing bridges, which Miranda then painted. Bridges no longer in existence are painted in sepia tones. Miranda states, “My greatest expectation and satisfaction is to show this project at as many libraries, museums and other venues as possible so everyone can enjoy the history as much as I have preparing it for presentation. (http://hudsonarealibrary.org/2017/01/exhibition-bridges-past-and-present-crossing-the-hudson-river/ (accessed 03042020))
This article appeared in the Register Star newspaper and on the Hudson Valley 360 website.
Contributed photo
Thomas Dinardi works with the Remote Patient Monitoring system at his home in Hudson with case manager Kelly Meus, RN, at right, and his daughter, Sandra Merritt. The system includes an iPhone and Bluetooth-based medical tools.
Thomas Dinardi was making frequent visits to the Columbia Memorial Emergency Room due to worsening congestive heart failure and shortness of breath.
After an ER visit in March 2017, CMH Cardiologist Dr. Barton Schoenfeld enrolled Dinardi in a new Remote Patient Monitoring kit that includes an iPhone, bluetooth-based biometric devices and a clinical case manager. The goal is to use the monitoring system to improve the health of patients like Dinardi and avoid costly and time-consuming ER visits.
So far, it’s working for Dinardi, who is a 93-year-old Hudson resident and U.S. Army veteran who served in World War II. And, CMH is planning to roll out even more kits in the next few weeks.
“When I started the program, I couldn’t walk to the mailbox and back. Now, I can,” said Dinardi, who has achieved consistent weight loss and improved mobility since starting the program.
Remote Patient Monitoring, or RPM, was created in a partnership between CMH and YouThisMe — a Hudson-based company that is known by the abbreviation UTM. It was designed for patients with common chronic conditions such as congestive heart failure, myocardial infarction (heart attack), COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), diabetes and pneumonia.
Here is how the RPM system works:
Upon discharge from the ER or hospital, a patient is given an iPhone pre-loaded with the RPM app and several wireless biometric devices. The devices include a Bluetooth-based scale, blood pressure cuff and pulse oximeter. A provider enters acceptable data ranges into a patient monitoring dashboard before issuing the kit.
From home, the patient electronically sends vital information each day including pulse/pulse oximetry, blood pressure and weight. They also answer three simple health-related questions: Do you feel better?, How is your breathing? and Do you want a call?
A case manager reviews the patient data on a smartphone or desktop computer and intervenes if an automated alert shows data outside the preset vitals range or if the patient requests a call.
Case managers like Kelly Meus, RN, use the patient data dashboard to monitor patients. It’s like a high-tech version of house call visits doctors once made, she said.
“Patients like Mr. Dinardi often go home feeling overwhelmed. But, the Remote Patient Monitoring System gives them a sense of empowerment and makes them feel like they have a blueprint to follow for better health,” Meus said.
When Dinardi got started, his daughter Sandra Merritt created a set of flashcards to help use the iPhone and medical equipment. The cards helped and Dinardi become more consistent with daily reporting.
With a good sense of humor, Dinardi acknowledged he has witnessed huge changes in medical care since his days as a U.S. Army medical tech aboard Merchant Marine hospital ships in the Mediterranean during the 1940s. The ships treated wounded soldiers from the battlefield and ferried them back to the United States.
“So with this new system, if nobody calls me at home, that means I’m doing something right,” Dinardi joked.
Dr. Ronald J. Pope is the Medical Director of CMH Care Centers and a board-certified family physician who helped create the RPM system. He believes hospitals across the nation may end up using similar systems in order to reduce readmission costs and meet federal government directives.
“About 20 percent of all hospital or ER patients are readmitted within 30 days on a national scale,” Pope said. “Many patients don’t recognize deterioration in their symptoms and don’t ask for help until they are back in the hospital. With the RPM system, we can identify symptoms much earlier and intervene to help patients.”
Pope and his team of support staff and case managers plan to begin offering the kits in the next few weeks and hope to have 50 or more in action by the end of 2017.
Worked library voter lists. Then we drove to Crossgates Mall in Albany in search of rain proof coats for our Netherlands visit. Went to Burlington Coat Factory. Dreadful place. Never enter that store again. Walked across mall to Macy’s. now suffering from early signs of consumption revulsion. Nothing water proof there. Stopped at Dicks where we found two water proof jackets. Saved. Continue reading
Great start to the morning.
Cleaned up office. Paid bills. Added citations from Sachs book Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable. Getting ready to write a review.
Worked on library volunteer site most of day. Solved the problem of keeping two different type of volunteers visible until processed. Then they automatically show upon Active lists.
Went to PT for second visit w Susan Sheldon about vertigo she repeated treatment to try to overcome lingering problems on getting up from bed.
Tennis nets are up early this year!!
Boring UTM telecon w Seth, Ole & Gayle went on for almost an hour. Need to work on marketing plan.
More Homeland and The Americans followed by 30 Rock. Karen still coughing.
8:30 discussion with Jeffrey Cadan about his business presentation. Made revisions. Plan to talk further at 11. No call back from him for the rest of the day.
Worked on volunteer site for HAL. Trouble with backend filters. No OR function.
Brief walk to river with Karen. Made vegetable frietada for dinner.
Watched two more episodes of The Americans. Scandal and then 30 Rock.
Breakfast and NYT’s.
Went to CGCC to a model toy and train expo. Surprisingly large event. Mostly men over 50.
Did buy a couple of cars marked with the Soo Line. HO and N scale. This because I worked on a track gang in Wisconsin during the summer of 1967.
Puttered around. Received call from Andrea about her boyfriend Jeff Cadan’s need for help with a presentation for investors in LMP Motors. Spent 3 hrs developing a draft. Will talk with him Monday morning. 
Watched two more episodes of The Americans
