Cardiac Rehabilitation
Mount Sinai Heart’s Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, certified by the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation, is designed to help people with heart disease recover faster and lead healthier lives. Our comprehensive, individualized program goes well beyond exercise and diet to include education, counseling, and emotional support, among other services.
Our program may be appropriate for you if you have had:
- Angina (chest pains)
- Balloon angioplasty, stent or other cardiac procedure
- A heart attack
- Bypass or valve surgery
- Heart failure
- A heart transplant
- Diabetes and are at increased risk of heart problems
Patient Services
We use a variety of approaches to help you recover from heart diseases and improve your overall quality of life.
- Exercise is vital to increase cardiovascular fitness, and improve your strength, endurance, and flexibility. You start our medically supervised exercise program two times a week, then progress to three weekly sessions. As you continue in the program, your exercise routines gradually become more challenging and a little longer. We monitor your electrocardiogram and your blood pressure as appropriate. You learn to monitor your own response to exercise, to prepare you for exercising on your own when the program is completed.
- Education and Counseling helps you and your family learn about your heart condition and how to manage your heart health. Through one-to-one instruction and a range of classes, you learn about your heart problem—its causes and treatments. You discover how to change your lifestyle to lower your risk of further heart problems (for example, how to eat heart-healthy, control your weight, manage stress, and stop smoking).
- Support from others who also have heart problems is a major part of the recovery process. In our program, you exercise in a group and help each other along the way. In addition, our advanced practice nurses and other health professionals, all specially trained in cardiac rehabilitation, manage your program and provide support, encouragement, and guidance. We encourage you to attend our stress management lecture series led by a psychologist specifically trained to work with heart patients and their families.
When you complete the Mount Sinai Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, we help you transition to a home or community-based exercise program and, if you like, refer you to resources for continuing help with lifestyle changes. We will be in touch with you for a period of time after you "graduate," and we are always there for you if you need us.
Program Schedule
Our 6- to 12-week program follows a fairly standard pattern beginning with a one-on-one interview. During your first appointment, you should make sure to have a list of all medications you are currently taking and the dosage for each. At the second appointment, we do a short physical exam and you begin to exercise.
For the next week or two, you will have pre-training, which is an hour of exercise to prepare you for the more rigorous exercise training. After that, your personalized cardiac rehab program will include 4 to 10 additional weeks of exercise training. Before each session begins, we will apply electrodes to your chest in order to monitor your heart rate and ensure safe participation.
In addition, members of our Cardiac Rehabilitation Program may participate in classes to increase their heart health. Classes focus on topics including overall heart health, nutrition, stress management, yoga. One-on-one consultations with registered dieticians and question and answer sessions with Mount Sinai cardiologists are also available.
Insurance and Costs
Typically, our program is covered by Medicare, managed care, and most major medical policies. We are happy to work with you to determine your level of coverage before you begin the program.
The charge for the program is $100/monitored exercise session. If you are not covered by your insurance (some insurance companies and Medicare only cover cardiac rehab for certain diagnoses), then we discount the cost by 50 percent for self-pay. Price is subject to change.