The main problem remote patient monitoring (RPM) solves is helping providers keep patients healthier so providers give the best value-based care (VBC). When patients are healthier, they don’t require as many visits to their doctor’s office, ER, or hospital. All of this improves the patient’s healthcare, quality of life, and the healthcare facility’s ability to qualify under VBC requirements.
In this article, we’ll further explore how RPM works to alleviate low performance on VBC standards and what benefits it provides to healthcare facilities and their patients. We’ll also discuss the most common remote patient monitoring use cases for specific examples of remote patient monitoring.
What Is the Purpose of Remote Monitoring?
The main purpose of remote monitoring is to improve patient health and outcomes, allowing providers to give better value based care. This VBC is a system designed to align the goals of providers and patients on better outcomes. It is quantified by the metric of health outcomes per unit of cost. In order for medical facilities to be reimbursed for their patient’s care under many insurance carriers (including Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare and Medicaid), they need to perform well on this standard. In addition, if the provider is a member of an Accountable Care Organization (ACO), the provider has an incentive to improve outcomes. RPM improves health outcomes significantly, and can allow a facility to qualify under VBC.
What Is the Value of Remote Patient Monitoring?
The value of RPM can be seen in the quantitative benefits of remote patient monitoring for doctors and patients. For example, Harmonize Health is a remote patient monitoring platform and some of our metrics for providing value are:
Optimizing Clinical Outcomes - healthier patients means fewer hospital trips and less expense
- 61% reduction in hospital admissions and 43% reduction in ER visits show people are staying healthier.
- $7000+ cost savings per patient per year means better outcomes for less cost.
Helping Providers Deliver RPM, Conveniently and Scalably
- 60% reduction in false alert volume means easier monitoring without fear of missing something important.
- 10x increase in monitoring throughput means more patients can be safely monitored with fewer staff.
- 50% reduction in patient bed days means better value-based care.
Improving Patient Experience
- +70% patient engagement means more effective and accurate monitoring.
- +40% patient satisfaction means happier, healthier people.
- Under 3 minutes average time it takes patients to submit their data means people can track their health without interrupting their day.
- 40% average decrease in vital fluctuations over time means more consistently healthy days.
- 97% monthly patient retention using our RPM service means medical facilities reduce their patient turnover.
RPM qualitatively improves a facility's ability to provide value based care. This can be seen in improvements to patients' health care quality of life (HCQoL) score improvements. Medical facilities can also use RPM to improve their performance measures compared to the standardized healthcare effectiveness and data information set (HEDIS).
Because HEDIS is designed to provide patients with reliable information to compare health plans and facility performance, improvements in these areas can mean higher qualification under VBC and a more favorable impression on potential patients. These factors acting together show that the relatively low remote patient monitoring cost can be covered for a facility by improvements in compensation and new patient recruitment.
Does CMS Cover Remote Patient Monitoring?
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does cover the costs of RPM in many cases. In addition to potentially covering the direct cost of remote patient monitoring, CMS also utilizes value-based care programs that financially reward medical professionals who provide the highest level of quality care to their patients. These value-based programs are part of an overall strategy CMS has begun to reform how medical care is paid for and delivered to patients. The new focus on providing value for patients and improving the quality of their care fits perfectly with the improved outcomes RPM delivers.
Harmonize Health: Improving Patient Health and Your Bottom Line
Rising healthcare costs continue to affect patients, healthcare facilities, and insurance providers. At Harmonize Health, we deliver remote patient monitoring that patients actually use and that streamline communications to deliver better patient outcomes. Healthier patients means fewer visits to the doctor or hospital, which means less expense for everyone. And better health outcomes for less money means your facility scores better on value-based care metrics too.
When you’re ready to see these benefits in your medical facility, contact us at Harmonize Health.
