The UT Health East Texas Cardiac Rehab is located in The Olympic Center. The impressive facility houses a gym with four stories dedicated to outpatient therapies. The facility has a swimming pool, a fitness gym, and an inpatient rehab hospital.
While the cardiac rehab department has a dedicated area for CR patients, attending patients have access to much of the equipment in the gym including treadmills, NuSteps, upright bikes, recumbent bikes, arm bikes, ellipticals, free weights, machine weights, and a 1/15 mile walking track.
Across the hall from the Cardiac Rehab area, they have a dedicated room for Cooking School Workshops. The room is set up with a stainless-steel cooking table that has an overhead mirror angled so that patients can see exactly how the recipe of the day is being prepared. They can accommodate 20-25 patients and family members in the Cooking School area. As patients move through the program, they have ample opportunity to connect with a Registered Dietitian dedicated to CR as the RD leads Cooking School and Nutrition Workshops and conducts individual 1:1 sessions.
The site’s manager, Clint Rivers, has worked in the field of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) since 1995. He’s witnessed plenty of changes in the field since he first visited a CR department as a college student taking his father to his cardiac rehab sessions. When his department was bringing on Pritikin ICR, he was initially skeptical of the program noting, “I did not think it would be successful in East Texas due to the number of smokers, obesity, and red meat.”
His hesitation isn’t uncommon, in fact his counterpart, Laura Lowe, who supervises Cardiac and Pulmonary Rehab at Covenant LifeStyle Centre in West Texas, recently described similar misgivings during a 2024 AACVPR Vendor Symposia panel discussion. Both have been impressed in their patient’s dedication to the Pritikin Eating Plan and the outcomes have been impressive. Laura would agree with Clint’s assessment, “I have been pleasantly surprised by the results that we have seen and the interest in our program.”
One thing I appreciate about Clint’s approach is the way he makes a point to engage with each patient and check in on his team. He’s very approachable, quick to respond, and he’s an excellent communicator. His patient, caring attitude inspires his team who all work well together to ensure each patient has an excellent experience from their very first day.
During a patient’s initial visit, they tour the facility, visit with someone on the CR team and their medical director to review the Pritikin Program and get to know the patient. During that evaluation, they head over to the track on-site to conduct a six-minute walk test.
If a patient is enrolled in intensive cardiac rehab (ICR), they attend sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Traditional cardiac rehab patients attend on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On ICR days, there are between 25 and 35 patients in attendance.
Since transitioning to ICR, Clint and his team have noticed patients are more willing to adopt regular exercise habits outside of rehab. Patient outcomes reflect that shift as well, one of the most notable improvements have been in the six-minute walk test results.
“I am impressed at the 6MWT results. We are seeing improvements we have never seen before.”
Every month, I meet with Clint to discuss how things are going. One of the areas we review is program completion rates. As Clint shares, he “makes it a personal goal to always be ahead of the national ICR average for sessions completed per patient”. The UT Health team has recognized that if they can get new patients past the first one to two weeks of rehab, they are more likely to complete the program. Given that, they do their best to optimize the patient experience – especially during those first two weeks.
Recently, several patients have significantly improved their ejection fraction (EF). Recently, a 55-year-old man entered the program with an EF of 25-30% and wearing a LifeVest. In less than three months, his EF% improved to 60-65% and he was able to remove the LifeVest!
Shortly after their facility transitioned to Pritikin ICR, one of their program graduates reached out to share that since graduating, he was able to climb a mountain!
"I wanted to say thanks again for the great work of you and all the staff at cardiac rehab. I appreciate so much the caring, compassionate and professional way that I was treated by all of you during my rehab.
Thanks to y'all, Paula and I went hiking at Mt. Magazine last week. We hiked the North Rim Trail (2.7 miles) and yes, we stopped several times. But then we had to walk another 2.5 miles on the road to get back to the lodge. And while I was walking pretty slow near the end, we made it. My heart is working well! We had a fun time.”
Clint’s UT Health East Texas Rehabilitation team is made up of 9 people. Jana, an RN, oversees the pulmonary rehab program. Exercise therapists Joyce, Peyton, and Kelli handle evaluations and education.
Every person on the team plays an integral role in optimizing patient success and as Clint says, the interaction between them is phenomenal. They shared that witnessing patient transformations is motivation enough, but they also try to challenge each other and themselves with improving monthly evaluations, units in a day, and graduations per month.
UT Health East Texas Rehabilitation is not only a great intensive cardiac rehab program, they have the outcomes to match.
Keep up the great work!