Yes, telemedicine has finally become the mainstream of healthcare delivery. From the comfort, ease and safety of their own homes, patients see doctors of all kinds.
But what happens to patients between doctor appointments, specifically patients with chronic illnesses? This is where a form of telemedicine – remote patient monitoring – can play a big role.
Andrew Zengilowski is the CEO and Co-Founder of CoachCare, an RPM platform provider designed to reduce patient costs, increase care efficiency, and reduce employee burnout. We sat down with him to discuss patient management not only in appointments but always and the role of RPM.
Q. What kinds of technologies and practices can now help improve health outcomes and reduce costs for the U.S. health care system?
ONE. Remote patient monitoring technology gets patients where they want to be – at home. Traditional in-office follow-up reduces the potential severity of health outcomes. With nearly 50% of medical groups reporting increasing absenteeism since 2019, service providers are able to gather meaningful health insights without losing patients time – usually to work far away – to go to the office.
Using pulsed oxygenblood glucose meters, blood glucose meters, blood pressure cuffs and scales, the traditional point of contact between the service provider and the patient is being disrupted in response to the fact that where so much is happening assessment and patient care today.
Changing the US healthcare economy begins with one patient at a time. With the acumen to manage patients between doctor’s office visits and customize treatment plans, follow-up of patients between visits can reflect a positive cost impact on the health care system, where billions of dollars a year are spent on emergency room visits, hospital stays, and readmissions. institute.
RPM allows providers to intervene in real time to improve health outcomes and reduce the incidence of these events. For instance, the co-founder of Diablo Family Physicians in Northern California says that from his patients’ homes, meaningful health insights are gathered from a device they wear and with an app that helps teams see what’s going on to “distinguish what’s real”.
Our app and team manage patient outreach so his staff gets real-time messaging for the first time. Meaningful data collection helps fill time and data gaps without the patient taking time out of the day to go to the office. Over 12 weeks, Diablo Family Physician patients wearing blood pressure cuffs were helped with behavioral control to see their systolic blood pressure drop by 20 points. That’s a huge amount to improve health outcomes using RPM.
Providers watch RPM technology analyze what’s happening to patients’ health outside of an office environment, helping to collect data year-round. For example, healthcare providers can measure blood pressure from their office and see a healthy range, only to later see high and dangerous levels when a patient uses a blood pressure cuff at home.
By alerting providers through RPM, more frequent interventions, especially for high-risk patients seen by specialists, can reduce emergency room visits. research, complications and late diagnosis with more serious health concerns and consequences. Some patients are not eligible to see a dietitian, and that’s where RPM plays an important role in intervention.
Insurance pays for the scale and an app that helps patients count calories and water intake. They get the best of both worlds without having to pay a visit to a dietitian, which tells us about their patients. One patient started using our app and in nine months lost 100 pounds.
Before he started, he knew he had high blood pressure and diabetes but not that he had potentially life-threatening sleep apnea. Many times he fell asleep in the car. He has progressed through the behavior change program and now runs at 3:30 a.m. before work. This technology is changing the healthcare economy every patient-doctor relationship.
Q. What should providers think about technology that makes year-round patient management more efficient to improve health outcomes?
ONE. Technology is underutilized in healthcare, including RPM. According to the American College of Physicians, only 24% of practices use RPM technology.
RPM technology expands the scope of practice with the secondary care team, part-time business partners to a certain extent. Certified RPM clinical teams carry an MD, PA, RN, LPN, or CMA for staff to monitor patient dashboards for clinic patients generally deemed medically appropriate for enrollment RPM.
More touchpoints, in addition to the clinical benefits of using this technology between visits, can improve communication and the relationship between patient and provider.
This digital health tool and secondary care team eases the pain of existing patient care shortages and increases the bandwidth of existing resources who can then potentially add patients. new. Suppliers can overcome staffing pain points with RPM to improve outcomes without adding additional staff.
For example, the team receives an alert when a patient is gaining weight and can identify what works or doesn’t work in the current plan of care, as well as focus on patients at risk for the disease vs. healthy patients. Instead of waiting for the patient to book an appointment, the clinic will receive a notification and can schedule an appointment to change the treatment for better health outcomes.
Attracting and managing existing RPM-eligible patients means more resources are devoted to new patient admission and practice development.
With the right technology, tools, and teams, managing practice teams efficiently and profitably can double revenue without an extra patient. Powerful RPM systems reduce staff burden and burnout while enhancing patient accountability for their health outcomes.
Staff can manage both existing and new patients to reduce the cost of providing care by allowing providers to operate more efficiently and increase revenue so that it can be reinvested in the activity.
Q. What is the future of remote patient monitoring? How are providers moving from the original capability of video appointments to customized, intensive care management between office visits?
ONE. The future of RPM will be defined by wider adoption, new devices, applications for more conditions, and consolidation of vendors.
We are still in the early stages of RPM adoption by hospitals, health systems and doctors and can expect a significant acceleration. RPM represents a paradigm shift in healthcare convenience, efficiency, and effectiveness and will be a near-universal service among providers in the future.
While it has taken decades for telehealth services to become widely accepted, the combination of a reasonable return rate for RPM, the COVID pandemic, and patient preferences for options. More convenient choices have forced suppliers to quickly adopt these technologies.
RPMs must necessarily be developed around the limited available hardware and range of metrics for monitoring health outcomes. Connected scales, blood pressure cuffs, and blood glucose meters all existed before the introduction of the RPM CPT code, leaving RPM primarily focused on conditions like hypertension and diabetes.
Devices capable of monitoring a broader set of biometrics and vitals open up RPM for pain management, orthopedics, seizure control, mental health, kidney, oncology, and cancer. other industries. For example, NXTSTIM has developed a new device for RPM-assisted pain management by providing physicians with data monitoring about a patient’s primary pain experience. Others are awaiting clearance for use in RPM.
FIGR8 has developed a musculoskeletal device with more precise range-of-motion quantification. Epitel has developed a wearable EEG and data analysis platform with potential applications for seizure diagnosis. While these devices are at different stages of development, it is clear that the innovation of remote monitoring hardware is poised to extend the reach of RPM.
Finally, the RPM consolidation continues. As the telehealth market saw many new entrants in the early days of video appointment and is now dominated by a few provider choices, the RPM market also will develop. CoachCare has completed two RPM acquisitions in the past three months for smaller providers. Verustat has raised special funds to acquire several RPM businesses.
Historically, high valuations throughout 2020-2022 have delayed consolidation. But with today’s more favorable valuation environment, rapid consolidation is underway.
Q. What types of care can providers expect to take with RPM in the future?
ONE. To take the power of RPM to the next level and ease some of the burden on our healthcare system, we as an industry need to understand the best ways to meet specific needs. and patient complexity.
Growth in RPM, for example, will include the ability to effectively serve patients with specialists in pain management, orthopedics, cardiology, nephrology, oncology, mental health, and other specialty care. visit effectively. The future of RPM depends on the ability to continuously innovate to benefit providers, patients, and payers.
For example, seeing a dietitian is usually not covered by insurance. However, medically necessary RPM patients can benefit from RPM tools like scales and technology to track metrics like calories and water consumption. This is an example where an RPM that adapts to the actual needs of a patient can help a patient become healthier, more aware, and more responsible.
Another futuristic aspect of RPM involves platform developers combining services perceived by competitors into the most comprehensive offering for providers to serve their patients. in the most powerful, real-time way possible. This is happening right now. We can expect to see more acquisitions and deployments of RPM models that reflect what we’ve discussed here.
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