Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) Healthcare: Benefits, Challenges, and Solutions
- Feb 2024 • The élos Healthcare Press
In the contemporary landscape of chronic disease healthcare, the integration of technology, data, insights, and continuous care offers promising avenues for individuals with chronic conditions to attain healthier outcomes.
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) stands as a pivotal component in this paradigm shift, providing care continuity and real-time vital readings. This enables physicians to make informed, data-driven decisions. Despite persistent challenges, including technological limitations and data security concerns, RPM healthcare is expanding, buoyed by improved clinical outcomes and advanced platforms. Effective solutions to these challenges promise significant benefits for both practitioners and patients.
In this guide, you will explore the expanding landscape of RPM healthcare, driven by enhanced clinical outcomes, heightened reimbursements, and advanced platforms. Despite persistent challenges, such as technological limitations and data security concerns, solutions can be implemented to unlock benefits for both practitioners and patients.
What is RPM healthcare?
RPM healthcare refers to remote care programs utilizing connected medical devices to monitor patient vitals between office visits. It supports a range of chronic conditions including diabetes, obesity, chronic kidney failure, hypertension, chronic heart failure, and COPD.
Patients regularly record vital readings like blood pressure, A1C, weight, and oxygen saturation, which are automatically transmitted to an RPM software platform.
Clinicians analyze these readings for critical values or trends requiring intervention, forming the fundamental workflow of an RPM program. The accumulation of data enables more informed clinical decisions and ultimately enhances the quality of life for individuals managing chronic diseases.
However, implementing and maintaining an RPM plan comes with its set of challenges, primarily associated with program development and sustainability.
The benefits of RPM healthcare
Significant benefits await both patients and care teams within an RPM healthcare program.
Collecting data through RPM provides valuable insights into patients’ daily management of chronic diseases, offering visibility into conditions, progression, and treatment effectiveness. With RPM, patients at risk of emergency department visits can potentially avoid such incidents. Access to comprehensive health data allows for the adjustment of care plans, resulting in improved clinical outcomes.
RPM strengthens care coordination and continuity by facilitating access to vital readings for all members of the care team, including specialists and primary care physicians. With readings syncing directly into the electronic health record (EHR), everyone has access to comprehensive information, eliminating blind spots and enhancing collaboration among care providers for patients with multiple conditions.
Intervening at the right time is crucial for patients with chronic conditions to avoid unnecessary visits to the emergency department (ED) and receive appropriate care. RPM enables immediate mitigation by providing continuous monitoring and early detection of potential issues. Research indicates that RPM significantly reduces ED visits and readmissions, with a review of 91 studies reporting a 49% decrease in ED visits associated with RPM implementation.
To achieve timely intervention, an escalation process within RPM software is essential, comprising several steps:
- Patients configure their vital thresholds in the platform.
- Nursing teams monitor and review patient vitals, reaching out to individuals for additional information as needed.
- If vitals are deemed critical, the nurse escalates the issue to the attending physician.
- Physicians provide instructions to patients, which may include medication recommendations, dosage adjustments, or clinic visits.
Obtaining insights into disease progression and treatment efficacy is paramount in managing chronic conditions effectively. Daily vital data provides concrete evidence of disease progression and treatment effectiveness, enabling the identification of improved outcomes such as decreased A1C levels, lower blood pressure, and weight loss.
Conversely, it also alerts healthcare providers to worsening conditions. Each piece of data offers valuable insight into a patient’s management of their chronic disease, informing medication prescriptions and lifestyle recommendations to enhance patient outcomes.
Enhancing patient engagement is a notable benefit of RPM. By implementing such a program, clinical monitoring teams establish regular communication with patients, thereby increasing touchpoints and fostering a sense of ownership in the care plan. Daily engagement encourages patients to take a more active role in their health, particularly those who struggle with follow-ups or complex treatment regimens, empowering them to be more involved in managing their well-being.
Maximize revenue potential through reimbursement support is a significant advantage of RPM healthcare, alongside its focus on care and clinical outcomes. Selecting an RPM solution that incorporates billing and reimbursement functionalities streamlines practice management processes. The technology accurately tracks patient interaction time, ensuring accurate claims submission.
Furthermore, by leveraging clinical monitoring services, eligibility verification, and onboarding assistance from your RPM vendor, you can scale the program to reach more patients, thereby enhancing reimbursement opportunities.
To effectively address the challenges and capitalize on the benefits of RPM, it is essential to invest in a robust platform and comprehensive clinical monitoring services.
Deploying an RPM program presents several challenges, but effective solutions can mitigate these obstacles.
Implementing RPM healthcare involves various dimensions and requirements, often posing challenges for healthcare organizations. Concerns about resource allocation for patient monitoring deter practices and physicians from adopting these programs, despite the significant benefits they offer to patients with chronic conditions.
Determining suitable patient populations for RPM involves assessing the criteria of your patient demographic. RPM services can benefit a significant portion of your patient population, regardless of specific diagnoses. Partnering with an experienced RPM company can help streamline this process and assist in identifying and onboarding appropriate patients.
Verifying insurance eligibility for RPM patients involves ensuring coverage under Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance plans, which may include specific CPT® code reimbursements. To streamline this process and maintain HIPAA compliance, delegate insurance verification to your RPM vendor, who can utilize secure tools to confirm coverage.
Successfully onboarding patients for RPM involves providing education on using connected devices and the importance of daily readings. Partnering with an RPM service provider can streamline this process, offering flexible onboarding options such as on-site, virtual, or hybrid sessions. Additionally, the vendor should handle device shipping logistics, ensuring a seamless experience for both patients and healthcare providers.
Staffing clinical monitoring for RPM healthcare presents a common challenge, requiring constant monitoring by licensed healthcare professionals. Resource allocation issues are prevalent among both small practices and large healthcare systems. A solution to this challenge is outsourcing clinical monitoring to an RPM partner. Their U.S.-based licensed nurses with clinical expertise provide 1:1 engagement with patients, reminding them to take readings and triaging any abnormalities. Nurses escalate critical readings to physicians for intervention, serving as an extension of your care team and allowing for the expansion of the RPM program.
Managing billing and revenue can be challenging for healthcare providers due to complexities in understanding the billing cycle and reimbursement processes. Without dedicated features in RPM software, manual documentation of monitoring services can be cumbersome. A viable solution is to select RPM software equipped with features for measuring, calculating, and assessing revenue data. Overcoming these obstacles enables the successful launch of RPM programs, allowing both providers and patients to reap the benefits of remote patient monitoring.
élos Healthcare offers specialized solutions for Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) healthcare.
When establishing an RPM healthcare program, partnering with a trusted provider offering both technology and monitoring services is essential. élos Healthcare stands out as a leader in this field, providing comprehensive solutions. Below are the key offerings you can anticipate from our services.
Our RPM software is designed to be accessible and feature-rich, serving as the cornerstone of your program. It includes comprehensive functionality to support the deployment and management of your RPM initiatives, offering:
- Access to vital readings anytime, anywhere, with features such as prioritization, timestamps for new readings, and graphical evaluations.
- A unified view of all patients within your practice, enhanced by search capabilities and customizable configurations.
- Patient progress tracking, with individualized thresholds and personalized care plan options.
- Patient engagement tools, facilitating two-way communication via phone or text directly within the platform.
- Centralized management of billing and revenue, providing real-time data views and simplifying administrative tasks.
In addition to RPM software, our comprehensive solution encompasses essential services crucial for initiating and expanding RPM programs. These clinical services are integral to program success and include:
- Patient identification: We assist in identifying patients most suitable for RPM participation.
- Insurance eligibility verification: Our RPM experts determine insurance coverage for patients under Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance.
- Patient onboarding: Our full-service implementation includes onboarding and educating patients through on-site, virtual, or hybrid models.
- Clinical monitoring: Our U.S.-based, licensed nurse teams specialize in RPM and track patient readings, providing triage, communication, and escalation support as needed.
We offer cellular-connected, patient-friendly devices delivered directly to patients’ homes as part of our service. We prioritize cellular devices over Bluetooth, leveraging the advantages of 5G technology to support more devices across networks. This ensures real-time data collection and greater stability compared to Bluetooth, which relies on uninterrupted Wi-Fi access and smartphone apps.
Embark on your RPM healthcare journey today with élos Healthcare.
Unlock life-changing benefits for your patients with RPM healthcare. Our turnkey solution offers everything you need, from software to connected devices to clinical monitoring, to streamline and expand your RPM program. Take the first step in your RPM journey today by scheduling a consultation with our experts.
Disclaimer: This blog is solely designed to provide information to the viewer. Please consult with an attorney for any legal advice.
@ 2024 DIGNITY HEALTHCARE LLC | HIPAA COMPLIANT
