Veteran nurse Linda Aseff spends her days in a maze of small cubicles in a room bigger than a football field, quietly phoning people who are suffering from chronic conditions or deadly diseases.

Her goal is to make sure they're doing what they need to do to stay alive, remain out of hospitals and get healthier.

File (ENLARGE)

Matria Healthcare Chairman Pete Petit sees his jet as a stress reliever. His disease-management firm aims to improve others' health.

File (ENLARGE)

Matria Healthcare nurse Linda Aseff contacts workers from a Marietta call center to make sure they keep up with their health. The service is promoted as a cost-saver for companies.

One day, Aseff, one of 1,000 Matria Healthcare nurses in five call centers across the country, just might check up on you. That's if your employer, like a growing number of big firms, has the health conditions of its employees tracked by Matria, a Marietta-based disease management firm.

The publicly owned company was originally a part of Healthdyne, which was founded by Pete Petit, Matria chairman and chief executive.

It is one of the nation's biggest firms in the relatively new field of disease management, a rapidly growing cost-control and health-improvement industry. Many experts see the field as one of the best hopes for slowing soaring medical costs.

Petit, 58, who dons a flight suit to fly his $300,000 Czech-Russian fighter jet as often as he can to reduce his own stress, has been driven to improve the health of Americans since his infant son, Brett, died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1970.

The nuts-and-bolts Lockheed aerospace engineer became a passionate crusader for better health. He quit his job after his son died and invented the Healthdyne Infant Monitor, a device that at one time was sent home with underweight babies or those prone to apnea.

The small machines measured babies' heartbeats and respiration and were equipped with shrill alarms to notify parents of problems.

Parents who heard the alarm could run to their infant's room and get the child breathing again.

Healthdyne, which went public in 1981, split into three public companies in 1995, one of which changed its name to Matria the next year.

The unit that manufactured the baby monitor was sold in 1997, and the company began rapidly morphing into what it is today — a disease-management firm.

Matria had already become a cutting-edge firm, one that makes deals with large corporations to try to reduce health care costs.

"Good health is good business" is Petit's mantra. The company's fortunes have been good not only for Matria and its shareholders, but also for the legions of workers whose health is followed by Matria's doctors and nurses.

1.8 million calls a year

In Matria's disease-management programs, nurses such as Aseff remind patients to take their medications, schedule checkups, pick up pills on time, watch their weight and exercise. They make 1.8 million clinical calls a year.

Matria said it produces health care savings for clients of 6.4 percent per employee and 21 percent for those in the sickest groups.

Its clients make up a who's who of U.S. businesses, such as AT&T, Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Humana, MGM Mirage, Procter & Gamble, Tyson Foods and others.

The goal of disease-management firms is simple. The sickest 20 percent of the population accounts for 80 percent of health care costs.

The program figures by managing the habits of those who are most ill — by phoning them with reminders and tips — health care costs could be radically reduced by keeping thousands out of high-priced emergency rooms and hospitals.

Aseff, a nurse for 30 years, keeps tabs on mostly the same people.

"I get reports on them," she said. "With each person, I set goals. It's my job to motivate them. I try to get them to take baby steps. It's challenging but rewarding."

She does a lot of comforting. People who've just had heart attacks are scared, she said.

Many of the companies Matria signs up persuade employees to take part in wellness programs through financial incentives. Employee information is monitored by Matria, which gets data on workers from insurance plans, pharmacies and laboratories, keeping records up to date.

Health enhancement accounts for two-thirds of Matria's revenues, which rose 6 percent in the third quarter to $89.6 million, compared with $84.2 million in the same period a year ago. The rest comes from tracking with devices that measure uterine contractions of women at risk for early delivery, Petit said.

"Ultimately, what we do here is try to manage a pregnancy before birth so that the infant won't have to go to the neonatal intensive care unit," Petit said.

However, terbutaline, a drug administered on doctor's orders as part of Matria's maternity services, has met with some controversy. The asthma drug has been used through a device that delivers constant doses of the medication to ward off premature delivery.

The Food and Drug Administration said in 1997 that the "off label" use of terbutaline for quelling uterine contractions "has not been demonstrated to be effective."

"The majority of obstetricians across the country use terbutaline to control pre-term labor," Petit said.

The company's main business is disease management, Petit said. And it "has proven to increase the health and reduce health care cost trends of employers," Petit said, in part because participating workers have access to a nurse by phone around the clock.

More than 125 million Americans have chronic illnesses, accounting for about 65 percent of all U.S. health care expenditures. And Matria, Petit said, is determined to put a dent in that.

"It's estimated that 25 cents of every health care dollar spent is wasted," said Petit, whose company employs 3,000 people. "Physicians don't have the time to do this continual mentoring and coaching that we do."

William Custer, director of the Center for Health Services at Georgia State University, said disease management looks promising.

"In theory, it makes good sense, so it should be easy in not too long a period to see how much money it can save," Custer said.

'Long way to go'

In the meantime, Petit said he still gets letters, poems and songs from 20-somethings who believe they were saved by the Infant Monitors, as well as from some of their parents.

Petit, who has a son and two daughters, has done well enough in business to become a generous philanthropist, giving $10 million to Georgia Tech. He recently was inducted into the Georgia State University Hall of Fame and has funded the school's Science Teaching Laboratory with a $5 million donation.

He has no plans to retire and is determined to help the country, companies and individuals reduce what they pay for health care.

"It's a big problem, and we've got a long way to go," the Army veteran said. "But I think disease management is going to get us there."

— This article is a reprint from The Atlanta Journal-

Constitution.