First thing each morning, Linda Jones climbs on a scale to weigh herself. The scale Jones uses, however, isn't your typical bathroom device. It holds a computer that reports her weight through a phone line directly to a nurse at Prairie Heart Institute at St. John's Hospital in Springfield.

"If my weight is up more than a pound or 1 1/2 pounds, they call me and tell me to take a water pill," said Jones, 48, of Springfield.

Jones has cardiomyopathy, a progressive weakness of her heart muscle that leaves her dangerously prone to fluid buildup. Jones said she has been hospitalized repeatedly for heart failure since doctors diagnosed the illness in 1994.

Today, she is one of 34 patients whose heart failure is monitored daily through the use of the specialized scale, called a Cardiocom Telescale. The object of the Cardiocom device and the real-time feedback it gives both caregivers and patients is to help them avoid one of the biggest pitfalls faced by heart failure patients-frequent hospitalizations, said Dr. Stephen Jennison, a heart specialist at Prairie Heart who runs the heart failure program.

So far, Jennison said, results of the monitoring program seem encouraging.

In the year before the 34 patients enrolled in the program they ran up $883,592 in collective medical bills. In the year since, by contrast, their medical bills totaled $355,390, a drop of more than 50 percent, according to Prairie Heart Institute statistics.

Jones said she hasn't been in the hospital for heart failure since she started the program.

Heart failure patients are exquisitely sensitive to changes in the amounts of fluid in their bodies, Jennison said. One of the best ways of keeping track of changes in fluid levels in these patients is how much they weigh, he said. "The scale is accurate to within one-tenth of a pound," Jennison said.

But the device does more than simply record weights. It also prompts patients with a series of questions aimed at determining if they are doing well or need medical attention.

A computerized voice in the Cardiocom asks patients a series of questions such as "Are you more short of breath that usual?" and "Are you taking your medications?" explained St. John's nurse Claire Call. The patient presses a yes or no button in response to each question.

The Cardiocom then takes about 10 seconds to send a record of the person's weight and answers to a special computer at Prairie, which stores the information. By pressing a few keys, Call and Jennison can display a complete record of how a patient is doing.

Call checks on every patient every day. If the person's weight is up more than an allowable amount, she makes a telephone call to check on the patient.

"I tell them to call me by noon," she said.

The idea is to reinforce daily the educational lessons that Call and Jennison try to impress on heart failure patients: control your weight, watch your diet, keep salt to a minimum and above all, take your medication.

Each time a patient climbs on the machine, he or she can see immediately the consequences of the previous day's behavior. That salty meal from the previous night might be reflected in a couple of extra pounds of fluid, no small matter in a heart failure patient.

"It's a way to reinforce the educational message about the importance of diet and medications," Jennison said.

Jones got her own feedback after a four-day trip to Memphis last March, during which she didn't weigh herself. When she returned home, she had gained four pounds.

Jennison and Call said they bought a total of 40 Cardiocom units with a special grant they got from the St. John's Hospital Foundation. Their hopes of expanding the program and demonstrating its effectiveness rest on a request for $1.9 million now before the General Assembly.

The money, requested by the Illinois Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Task Force, would go toward paying for a large-scale demonstration project to show that monitoring heart failure patients closely bring results in the form of lower medical costs, Jennison said.

It would also add cardiac rehabilitation services to the program, an expense often not covered by health insurance for heart failure patients, he said.