There is a revolutionary way of delivering care to patients by using real-time data to ascertain a patient’s health status. These data points are then electronically transmitted to a clinician, which may require immediate intervention and prevent a problem from escalating. This is what Remote Patient Monitoring or RPM is all about. It delivers care wherever the patient may be and safe place during a public health emergency is at home. It is virtual care that is on-time, on-point, and accessible at any time or place.
What is remote patient monitoring?
RPM is a reimbursable telehealth program introduced towards those with – or at the chance of developing – a chronic condition. For example, if a patient has hypertension, a provider might deliver a Cellular blood pressure cuff also request the patient to bring a daily measure. An RPM software platform will automatically collect the measures, make alerts and mail messages. It deliver monitoring dashboards for a monitoring team, follow the time spent studying the data, and optionally merge to a provider EHR.
Operating RPM is like sending a virtual nurse home with your patient to maintain an unflinching eye on vital health data. The monitoring devices are your eyes and ears, sending routine reports back to mission control.
All parties – patients, providers and payers – can help from an RPM agenda. Patients are decreasing their risk of hospitalization and long-term health costs while enhancing their health status with the help of a technology-enabled “still on” care team. Providers can provide enhanced virtual care, and grow their virtual care revenues while enticing and retaining patients. Payers decrease the total cost of care by controlling hospitalizations, and adverse acute health events (like heart attacks), and can enhance or stabilize their comprehensive health status.
RPM and Covid
Remote patient monitoring is becoming increasingly popular in healthcare system as it is transforming how patients are observed and managed. This technology makes use of digital tools to gather clinical and other physiology-related data from patients in one area by transfer it securely to healthcare specialists in different locations. It helps healthcare specialists assess the data and make recommendations. As it requires fewer office visits, RPM provides cost-effective management of patient health, with benefits for both patients and providers alike.
Due to increased convenience and safety, RPM is rapidly growing in importance in healthcare. Healthcare providers can better manage patients’ health and provide more efficient care by remotely monitoring vital signs, medication adherence, and other health metrics. RPM also offers an invaluable resource to patients, allowing them to remain connected to their healthcare provider while receiving care from the comfort of their homes.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with reimbursement by Medicare and other insurers, has supercharged the uptake of RPM. As acceptance within the healthcare industry increases, its value is only becoming more apparent as it offers both patients and providers greater convenience and safety, as well as improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
How does Remote Patient Monitoring work?
As part of telehealth delivery, Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) collects and transmits data remotely to healthcare providers for analysis and interpretation. Vital signs and health metrics, such as blood pressure, heart rate, weight, oxygen levels, and blood glucose levels, are monitored with wearable devices, smartphones, and other digital tools.
A key component of RPM is patient education and support, which helps patients better understand and manage their own health conditions. With the high quantity of real-time data provided by RPM, healthcare providers are able to provide more accurate diagnoses and tailor treatments to meet the needs of patients, leading to better outcomes for them. Using RPM technology, patients can manage their health in an efficient and convenient manner.
Patients with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease, as well as post-operative recovery and rehabilitation, can be consistently monitored with the help of a patient monitoring program. In addition to being able to monitor their own vital signs and symptoms, patients can also transmit health data for real-time analysis to their healthcare providers through an easy-to-use monitoring platform.
How Does Remote Patient Monitoring of Patients Work?
RPM uses digital devices to collect data about a patient’s health status via a monitoring software program. Such gadgets range from wearables, like smartwatches and activity trackers, to other tools such as pulse oximeters and glucose meters. These measure metrics like heart rate, oxygen saturation, body temperature, blood pressure and weight. Depending on the individual’s requirements, they will be provided with one or more monitoring pieces of equipment. This data is then passed onto a secure platform where medical professionals can access it at any time. Subsequently, any treatments such as medication dosages or appointments may be determined based on the analysis of the received information.
This system provides doctors with high-quality, real-time data and insight into the patient’s vital signs, allowing them to make more accurate diagnoses and provide more effective treatment.
How do remote patient monitoring devices work?
Patients can collect and transmit data about their health status to their healthcare providers for analysis and interpretation using remote patient monitoring devices as part of the RPM process. Depending on the patient’s needs and the condition being monitored, the tools used can vary.
The following are some examples of remote monitoring devices:
- Smartwatches, fitness trackers, and activity monitors are common wearable devices that collect data on physical activity, heart rate, and sleep.
- A blood pressure cuff measures blood pressure and transmits the information to a healthcare provider.
- Diabetes patients can monitor their blood sugar levels with glucose meters, which measure blood glucose levels.
- Using pulse oximeters, patients with chronic lung conditions such as COPD can monitor their oxygen saturation levels in the blood.
- A weight scale measures weight and can be used to monitor weight changes in obese patients.
- A thermometer measures body temperature and can be used to monitor fever in patients with infectious diseases.
- To transmit data to a healthcare provider, some RPM devices may require additional equipment, such as a hub that connects to the internet.
What are the benefits of remote patient monitoring?
The advantages of RPM are indisputable. This healthcare innovation permits a more productive and economical patient health management, resulting in better patient outcomes and cost savings for the entire health system. The telehealth modality facilitates communication between patients and doctors, as well as in-the-moment monitoring of patients, thereby enhancing engagement and adherence to treatment programs.
Additionally, RPM is advantageous for clinical trials; it allows for more frequent, precise and low-cost data gathering, producing more substantial and trustworthy study results at a lower expense. With reimbursement for RPM increasingly commonplace, its use is becoming increasingly prevalent and essential to the healthcare industry. We will go into further detail on the numerous rewards that come with RPM – for patients, healthcare providers, clinical trials, payers as well as the whole healthcare system – here. Everyone stands to benefit from RPM!
Patient Benefits
- By monitoring chronic health conditions and tracking patient recovery, medical providers can remotely monitor and manage their patients’ chronic diseases, eliminating the need for in-person visits to the doctor’s office to treat them. A variety of conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, and COPD, can be managed more efficiently and effectively as a result.
- RPM reduces the number of emergency situations, hospitalizations, and readmissions by enabling early intervention and better management of chronic illnesses. As a result, patients need fewer hospitalizations and readmissions.
- Patients can make informed decisions about their lifestyle, diet, and treatment plan adherence with next-generation RPM solutions, which include user-friendly mobile applications.
- In-Person Office Visits Reduced: With RPM, patients can receive care from the comfort of their homes, reducing illness risk, travel time, and costs.
- Personalized, individualized care is enhanced through constant communication between patients and their physicians through RPM.
- Healthcare providers are able to improve their evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment prescriptions with the help of patient data collected through RPM. As a result of real-time monitoring and symptom analysis, clinicians can intervene earlier and better manage patients’ conditions, which leads to dramatic improvements in patient care.
Healthcare Provider Benefits
- RPM boosts clinical efficiency by enabling better priority-setting and triage of each case, as well as better communication through the gathering, storing, and utilization of health data to enhance medical judgement. Consequently, waiting room crowding is reduced while the time devoted to those in need of quick attention is augmented, allowing healthcare providers to attend more patients and thereby raising their practice income.
- RPM Increases Practice Revenue Streams: CMS supports RPM in order to benefit both patients and providers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has created their own Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Codes, which allow healthcare providers to bill for remote patient interactions. As a result of RPM, providers can also attract and retain more patients by implementing innovative treatment models.
- Thanks to RPM, patients enjoy the benefit of having their health data monitored and transmitted to their healthcare provider. This process both helps to ensure that a clinician is able to intervene if any readings are outside of the normal ranges and also helps give patients a sense of empowerment, as they can actively take part in managing their own health. Taking measurements from home or other places means clinicians can provide proactive treatment between virtual appointments.
- When patients and doctors wanted to reduce in-person contact for routine appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth became an increasingly important means of providing healthcare. By eliminating the need for underserved patients to travel great distances for specialty care, remote patient monitoring and telehealth enable rural hospitals and clinics to provide high-quality healthcare services closer to home.
- We are aware of the growing shortage of medical workers, so remote patient monitoring programs have been developed to improve access to care in creative ways. These systems can be especially useful for people living in rural areas where services may be limited, or who cannot access traditional healthcare for any reason. The use of RPM is convenient as it removes the digital gap between tech-savvy and older people, enabling them all to manage their own health independently.
- CPT codes enable healthcare providers to be reimbursed for providing RPM services to their patients. To learn more about the specific RPM codes and requirements for reimbursement, click here.
- RPM offers benefits to more than just patients and healthcare providers. It can also benefit pharmaceutical companies, payers, and healthcare organizations.
Clinical Trial Benefits
- Enhanced patient engagement: RPM enables real-time monitoring of patients in clinical trials, resulting in improved adherence.
- RPM enables more frequent and accurate data collection, which leads to more robust and reliable study results.
- The use of RPM reduces the need for in-person visits and hospital stays, resulting in cost savings for patients and healthcare providers.
- RPM reduces the need for hospital stays and in-person visits, resulting in cost savings for patients, healthcare providers, and payers.
- By regularly monitoring patients with chronic conditions, payers can better manage these conditions, resulting in improved population health and lower healthcare costs.
- RPM helps payers identify patients who require more intensive care and direct them to the appropriate level of care, resulting in better resource utilization.
Financial Considerations of a Remote Patient Monitoring Program
Let’s begin with the basics. The first query you need to answer is, do you have patients that can benefit from RPM? Of course, the patient benefits. At least 20% – 100% of your patients have one or more of the following diagnoses:
- Hypertension
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- COPD
- Heart Disease
These conditions impact the most people and can be monitored easily by using the most cost-effective and easy-to-use monitoring devices in 2022. These devices are affordable, easy to use, and accurately provide the measurements you can utilise to monitor and help patients improve their health.
Once you know patients would benefit from an RPM program, you’ll need to provide you can finance your RPM program. The most popular method is via payer reimbursement. CMS/Medicare began to reimburse for the current RPM model in January of 2020. Large commercial national payers (United Healthcare, Humana, etc.) also reimburse at equivalent levels to Medicare. Twenty-two (and counting) Medicaid programs also offer reimbursements. A successful RPM program will reimburse between $100 – $200 Per Patient Per Month (PPPM) for CPT Codes 99453, 99454, 99457, and 99458.
Reimbursement is not the only budget approach. Controlling hospital readmission, concierge care bundles, and cash pay (patient out-of-pocket) can also function. The funding will help you cover the three primary costs of an RPM program: software (i.e. The RPM Platform), hardware (i.e. The Monitoring Devices), and people (i.e. Monitoring/Care Team).
RPM Delivers Quantifiable Benefits
RPM is a method of healthcare delivery that harnesses the power of telecommunications technologies to monitor and collect patients’ health data outside of traditional settings. The benefits are immense and can be summed up as a win-all for patients and providers alike.
Revisiting a previous blog entitled Is Remote Patient Monitoring Important To Your Practice?, RPM is preventive care at its best with positive impacts on patient health outcomes, cost reductions, and patient engagement. It brings much-needed care to Medicare patients with chronic conditions so that they can live a quality life and avoid the cost of complications or hospitalizations.
RPM bridges the care gap by extending its reach even to the remotest populations. It creates opportunities for effective communications, fosters trust, extends continued support, and builds a closer relationship between a clinician and their patients.
It is also a very lucrative Medicare program with billable reimbursements for a new revenue stream. More than the incentives, RPM brings to a practice a competitive edge and transforms workflows for increased efficiency and productivity.
Monitoring chronic disease management programs remotely
For chronic disease management programs, remote patient monitoring can help healthcare providers intervene more quickly and prevent a controllable illness from becoming a health emergency.
Management of hypertension
If the blood pressure reading deviates from a set range, remote patient monitoring systems can send notifications in real-time. Additionally, medical experts can detect unusual blood pressure trends by saving measurement data on a regular basis. As a result, regular logging and reporting of readings in the traditional at-home manner is eliminated, and medical emergencies are reduced as well.
Management of cardiovascular diseases
RPM has been demonstrated to be a beneficial technique for managing cardiovascular disease; it is capable of controlling blood pressure, predicting possible heart failure and discovering arrhythmia at an earlier stage, thus allowing timely intervention. RPMS automatic data collection from those suffering from or prone to the condition can now be done remotely. A variety of independent devices can measure symptoms, body weight, physical activity, pulse rate and regularity as well as ECG, oxygen saturation and sleep quality. As a result of the transition from traditional to automated remote monitoring, patient compliance has seen increased success and furthermore health care providers are provided with accurate data which will lead to improved treatment for patients suffering from cardiovascular issues.
Weight Management and Obesity
Approximately 4 out of 10 Americans are overweight or obese, which poses a significant health burden in the US. In addition to cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease, diabetes, and even cancer, obesity has been linked to a variety of health problems. This is the case, so weight loss is strongly recommended to improve health outcomes and prevent complications and additional risks to one’s health. Remote patient monitoring can help in the weight loss process.
Management of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
As a chronic disease, COPD requires close monitoring to improve the patient’s well-being. A coordinated care approach that includes oxygen support, tailored maintenance and rescue medications, and patient rehabilitation that is current and combined with home monitoring for patients like RPM and pulmonary function tests, can significantly improve patient adherence. COVID-19, one of the most life-threatening respiratory diseases, may even be prevented.
Remote monitoring with RPM can have a major impact on COPD management. By closely tracking and addressing patients’ symptoms and lung function, healthcare providers can intervene timely and make the necessary treatment modifications. This could help to avert exacerbations and hospitalizations, thereby enhancing patients’ quality of life. Additionally, RPM can remind individuals to take their medications regularly and carry out pulmonary function tests effectively, resulting in increased adherence and improved outcomes.
Management of asthma
RPM is beneficial in assisting healthcare providers to intervene quickly, and make necessary adjustments. As a result, exacerbations and hospitalizations can be avoided, ultimately leading to an improved quality of life for patients. Moreover, RPM can act as a reminder for patients to ensure they are adhering to prescribed medications and verifying their lung function routinely. This will enable better care outcomes.
With such quantifiable benefits that RPM brings to a practice, it is only right that your next question should be, when can I start?
At the same time, understand that starting your own RPM program will likely involve substantial investments of time, energy, and money on your part, so it’s not for the faint of heart. With different vendors and models out there to choose from and each one promoting their brand, finding out which one would be a perfect fit for your practice can be daunting. Therefore the next question would be, with whom should I start?
Knowing What Fits Your Practice
As RPM continues to evolve and grow with the encouragement and support of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) one of the ways to differentiate between various vendors is to identify what makes one program better than another.
In getting started with RPM, here is what a comprehensive RPM program should offer:
No upfront costs, risk-free
The RPM vendor will demonstrate how to use the devices for free with no demand for a credit card or any alternative modes of payment. They will also provide the devices at no cost to the patients.
Medicare eligibility checks
Not all patients are eligible for RPM so the vendor should be willing to first check your patient population. They should coordinate with the practice to contact only the patients that are qualified to join the program.
White-Glove set up
Setup should include patient outreach, education, and enrollment. Once the eligible patients have been identified and the patients have given their consent, the vendor can now start sending fully functioning RPM devices and provide the training on their proper use.
Fully configured, ready to use RPM devices
The devices should be ready to use right out of the box with no complex instructions in setting them up. It must have integrated cellular capabilities to safely and swiftly transmit the data without connecting to wifi, plugging in the device, or requiring any manual input.
Automatic transmission of data without user intervention
The RPM vendor should use devices that automatically transmit data without user intervention so that clinicians may stay constantly informed. In this way, patients can focus more on taking the needed measurements without worrying about sending them.
Predictive Population Health management (PHM)
Transmitting the data is just a simple part of the process but what is crucial is monitoring data so the measurements do not cross preset thresholds. This includes PHM alerts the clinical team to prevent emergencies and to prioritize those who are most at risk.
Use of AI
Not many vendors now employ artificial intelligence, but this is the future of healthcare and essential in optimizing your patient care as well as efficiently running your practice. The AI virtual assistants can alert the user when measurements are not taken, taking the burden off of the clinical team so that they can better serve their patients.
EHR Integration
Integrating RPM into the EHR systems is essential in care management, but it is also required in making Medicare claims. If the EHR platform has limited storage capabilities, there is also the issue of managing security. The RPM vendor should have applications that can be seamlessly integrated into practice workflows to assure there will be no disruption to current routines.
Data Security and Patient Privacy
Leveraging a cloud-based solution that offers robust security while maintaining Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance is also key to a successful RPM program.
Customized scaling for every practice
The RPM vendor should be able to rapidly scale up or down depending on the needs of a particular practice. What is important is for the vendor to be equipped to meet your needs like onboarding your patient population quickly so those who need monitoring can immediately benefit from the RPM program. The ability to scale your patients is vital because it will enable your practice to grow and generate new revenues.
To answer the question assumed earlier, you should start your RPM journey with a vendor who will offer the most comprehensive, supportive, and thorough program. It also helps if they understand your practice workflows, know the intricacies of CMS requirements, have sufficient customer support, and employ a sound technology infrastructure to implement an effective RPM solution.
Why Outsourcing RPM Is A Smart Move
If you want to capitalize on the benefits that RPM delivers, make the smart move of looking for the right vendor. Starting your own program is, yes, doable, but is it sustainable? Setting up an RPM program on your own is an incredibly tough venture and here’s why:
Additional Cost
You will have to purchase the devices, equipment, software, and other needed infrastructure. There is also the matter of training your staff with the new program, hiring new clinical staff to monitor and contact patients, bringing in the right IT resources, or and setting up the infrastructure for your own call center.
Additional Administrative Duties
Overseeing a complex program would further burden your staff with additional responsibilities on top of their already heavy workloads. There is no room for error in RPM because it could impact health outcomes and lost revenue.
Disruptions to Practice Workflows
It is inevitable there will be disruptions in your workflows as you try to navigate new technology. This could exact a toll on your productivity and the overall operations of your practice.
Understanding Medicare’s Rules and Requirements
One must be highly adept at CMS rules and keeping up with requirements particularly in the reimbursement codes to file successful claims. Otherwise, the potential to grow your revenues will be all for naught.
Getting Started with the Right RPM Vendor
In summary, RPM has been demonstrated to be a powerful way to manage various chronic illnesses, including hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, COPD and asthma. It also can be applied to other conditions such as heart failure, chronic kidney disease and mental health disorders. Because RPM offers more regular assessments of vital signs and patient symptoms, it can lead to swift interventions and treatment changes; this should promote better results for patients and reduce the impact of chronic conditions on healthcare systems.
Learning a new technology can be difficult and intimidating. However, the right RPM vendor can make it simple and easy. Now that you know the criteria of what a good RPM program should be, you can provide the best remote care to your patients and increase your cash flow as well.
Ascent Care Partners completes the checklist with its turnkey RPM solution. We will do all the heavy lifting so you can do what you do best: care for your patients. Talk to us or start a chat and you can get started right away.
