According to the CDC, roughly 60% of Americans deal with at least one chronic condition, such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Unfortunately, for many patients, securing timely and high-quality care can be exhausting in itself—so many appointments, so much time involved, and so much stress. And this makes it harder for healthcare professionals to deliver the right care at the right time.
For patients who would benefit from real-time monitoring of vitals such as blood sugar, blood pressure, and weight, there’s an easier way—and it’s much more convenient and proactive than attending a series of time-consuming and not-always-essential appointments.
We’re talking about remote patient monitoring, or RPM—a win-win for patients and providers alike. This increasingly-popular practice enables patients to monitor many of their own vitals from the comfort of their home, and to have their results transmitted in real-time to their healthcare providers. The providers, in turn, can monitor this data remotely and engage with the patient when needed.
In this article, we’ll be exploring the uses and benefits of remote monitoring in healthcare, including how it works and how the right software makes it easy for providers and patients—and elevates the standard of care.
An Overview of RPM Benefits in Healthcare
The overall benefit of remote patient monitoring is its ability to enhance patient care and increase operational efficiency for providers. Other benefits of implementing an RPM program include:
- Improved Chronic Condition Management: RPM helps patients and providers manage chronic conditions more effectively. A Pew Internet survey found that 60% of U.S. adults with one condition and 38% with 2 or more conditions are not monitoring their health—with nearly half of all U.S. adults living with at least one chronic condition, these numbers represent a major portion of the population that are lacking effective health management habits. Results from the same survey found that half of the people tracking their health only update their notes occasionally and most do not share that data with anyone. RPM can help address these issues. A study by the Mayo Clinic found that 80% of patients enrolled in an RPM program engaged with the technology, and experienced a reduced rate of hospitalization, intensive care unit admission, mortality, and cost. Results like this show that RPM can engage patients and help them better manage their health conditions.
- Enhanced Patient Engagement: By providing tools to actively monitor their health, RPM encourages patients to take an active role in managing their conditions. As the previous Mayo Clinic study showed, when given the right tools, the vast majority of patients became active participants in their own health journey. RPM can empower patients to take control of their health and help them adhere to their treatment plans.
- Early Detection and Intervention: Continuous monitoring enables healthcare providers to detect any abnormal activity early, allowing for swift interventions. When patients can have their treatment plans adjusted to accommodate changes, the likelihood of having to visit an emergency room or needing to be admitted to the hospital can be significantly reduced.
- Increased Access to Care: RPM can reduce barriers to care for many diverse groups of patients. Patients in rural or underserved areas can receive high-quality care without having to travel to a healthcare facility; individuals with mobility issues can stay in the comfort of their own home; and people from minority communities are just as likely to engage with RPM programs as non-minorities. In short, it is highly feasible for RPM programs to help improve outcomes for many different patient populations that have previously been underserved.
- Cost Reduction for Patients and Providers: Remote patient monitoring is proving to be a significant cost-saver for both patients and healthcare providers, particularly through Medicare’s reimbursement policies. With expanded coverage and broader RPM reimbursement policies, healthcare providers have been able to expand their RPM programs, reducing costly hospital visits and treatments for many patients.
- Better Quality of Care: Healthcare providers can tailor patient care more effectively due to the continuous stream of health data from their RPM programs. With access to trends and the ability to set up alerts for readings outside of normal ranges, providers can make data-based decisions rather than relying on guesswork.
- Efficient Healthcare Delivery: With real-time data, providers can prioritize their attention and resources, focusing on patients who need immediate care and streamlining overall healthcare services.
- A Shift to Preventative Healthcare: Remote patient monitoring is a proactive approach. Rather than waiting for symptoms to worsen, patients are encouraged to maintain their health and take action before acute care is needed.
Related: The Advantages of Remote Patient Monitoring →
Obviously there are several compelling benefits of remote patient monitoring, for patients as well as providers. In addition to the general benefits of telehealth—primarily, its convenience, accessibility, and efficiency—there are key advantages of remote monitoring for patients and providers.
The Benefits for Patients
The greatest, or most obvious, benefit of RPM for patients is convenience. The easier it is for patients to take basic readings like blood glucose or blood pressure levels, the more likely they are to follow through—amassing important data that’s automatically transmitted to their provider. Then, appointments can be set as needed, saving a great deal of time and energy.
By making healthcare monitoring more convenient and engaging, RPM also helps to improve patient outcomes. That’s primarily because patients are more likely to continue their necessary course(s) of treatment when they:
- Understand their condition and the necessity for a treatment plan,
- Play an active role in monitoring their condition and evaluating their options, and
- Only have to attend necessary appointments.
The Benefits for Providers
Convenience is also an important benefit of RPM for healthcare professionals. Take weight management as an example. An important part of managing weight-related conditions (such as weight gain or loss) involves frequent weigh-ins. Not only do patients not need to report to a medical facility to step on a scale, doctors and other professionals don’t necessarily need to be involved. With RPM, patients can weigh themselves and have the data be automatically transmitted to their provider (ensuring that the data providers receive is accurate without relying solely on patient reporting).
Remote patient monitoring is also easily scalable and highly efficient for the healthcare system and provider network. Patients who adhere to an RPM program also require fewer hospitalizations and ER visits, alleviating strain on these often-taxed aspects of healthcare systems.
Finally, RPM enables providers to foster more meaningful and productive relationships with patients, empower them to better understand their own health, and provide consistent, top-tier care for their patients. The data collected by RPM devices also empowers doctors and other healthcare professionals with the insights they need for data-driven decision making, leading to better outcomes.
Learn More About the Benefits of RPM for Patients and Providers →
How Does Remote Patient Monitoring Work?
While each individual case will be tailored to a patient’s unique needs and condition, here are the key steps of a typical remote patient monitoring (RPM) process:
- It starts with patient education. As a healthcare provider meets with a new patient, they will provide important information about understanding and managing that condition, as well as the potential options for treatment. When applicable, this will include familiarizing them with the idea of wearable devices and other remote monitoring tools (which we’ll address in the next section).
- Once the patient has been introduced to RPM, their doctor will then explain the logistics of data collection and address any questions or concerns the patient might still have. Once everything is clear, the patient can return home to begin the actual remote monitoring.
- From the convenience of their home, patients can use the device or devices provided to them with whatever frequency they were advised. On the set schedule, the patient can take their basic readings, and that’s basically it—with modern RPM devices, the data is transferred straight to the healthcare provider. This ensures that the data received is both timely and accurate.
- Monitoring will continue over time, and providers may—depending on the results—decide to meet with the patient either virtually or in-person. From that point, the process essentially returns to the first step: patient education. Patients’ providers play a key role in not only summarizing and interpreting the data, but making sure patients know the implications and what interventions or treatment might make sense next.
Once a patient has established a relationship with a provider, their remote monitoring will usually continue over time with check-ins. When evaluated against the data that’s been collected over the course of the RPM program, it becomes easy to contextualize the results and understand whether additional treatment is needed (or if new symptoms or conditions emerge).
What Are the Requirements for Remote Patient Monitoring Reimbursement?
While Medicare and private insurance are often willing to reimburse RPM-related costs, not all expenses will apply. It’s important for healthcare providers to understand the requirements, so they can help their patients understand how to minimize their out-of-pocket costs.
For more information about remote patient monitoring and Medicare requirements, this in-depth article put together by the ACP provides a good overview of applicable billing codes, requirements, and related regulations.
Is Remote Patient Monitoring Worth It?
Ultimately, yes—in fact, it represents a win for both providers and patients. For patients, it’s an engaging and empowering approach to healthcare, and one that requires far fewer doctor visits without sacrificing quality of care. It also provides healthcare professionals to make timely, data-driven decisions and to provide timely, tailored care for their patients.
Dive Deeper Into the Costs of Remote Patient Monitoring →
Get Started with TimeDoc Health
If there’s one aspect of remote patient monitoring we haven’t really touched on yet, it’s what often proves to be a logistical challenge of RPM. We covered how easy RPM devices are to use from the patient’s perspective—including the automatic, real-time of their data. But we haven’t gotten too deep into how all of those readings from various patients and various devices are actually collected, organized, stored, and made accessible to healthcare providers.
That’s where remote patient monitoring software—and TimeDoc Health—come into play. Our data handling and analysis platform integrates seamlessly with electronic health record (EHR) systems, making implementation easy. One of TimeDoc Health’s most powerful functions is its real-time data analytics, which track individual data points and alert providers whenever readings fall outside of the patient’s normal or expected range.
Learn more about our RPM platform and virtual care services by visiting our Resources or About Us pages, or contacting us to start the conversation about how we can work together to make efficient and effective remote patient monitoring a reality for your practice and its patients.
