How does RPM benefit both — Patients and providers?
Remote patient monitoring goes beyond just offering patients comfort and engagement. It ensures patient that there is someone who is watching out for their health and well-being on daily basis. Remote patient monitoring or RPM is a technology that enables monitoring of patients at their homes, outside clinics or hospitals.
This monitoring system is a subcategory of telehealth that permits patients to use mobile medical devices and technology to gather patient-generated health data. Some of the vital signs, weight, blood pressure and heart rate are physiological data that can be collected with remote patient monitoring programs. This type of service allows providers to track healthcare data for patient once they are out of hospital, thus reducing readmission rates, number of hospitalizations and length of stay in hospitals. All this improves quality of life and helps contain costs.
How Does Remote Patient Monitoring work?
In technical terms, the data collected by remote patient monitoring system is sent to the valid location and saved in relational database. This helps the healthcare organizations to have wireless telecommunication at individual instances or to review the entire health history. When a healthcare provider has overlooked the data or detected any issue that requires patient to have in-person visit; the device gives alerts to the patient.
What are some benefits of RPM?
The providers’ capacity of treating more patients increases significantly. This innovation of remote patient monitoring has expanded the access to care globally. Some of its other benefits include, improved quality of care. It also reduces the possibility of burn-out, resulting in obvious benefits to patient care.
Remote monitoring system creates way through which people are more engaged and accountable for their health; at the same time improving patient behavior. It is frequently used to help patients that require chronic, post-discharge care. This system helps notify healthcare organizations of potential health issues and keep track of patient data between visits. This technology provides comfort and familiarization to the patients.
By facilitating continuous connections between people and their caregivers this system also enhances patients’ level of education, support and feedback because it’s not just collecting data, but it is providing information back, over time to the patients. Remote patient monitoring system, can also be utilized by businesses that makes sure employees are on right track when it comes to compensation.
What are RPM tools?
RPM tools are becoming more affordable, unlike before when they were only targeted to hospitals and practices. It uses specific technology to transmit information between patients and physicians, in other words it is just one delivery system within the broader telehealth industry.
Some examples of the devices are voice apps for diabetic patients, which gives them a reminder to take their insulin. Another example, is digital blood pressure cuffs that enables patients to remotely send their blood pressure and pulse to their respective providers. It is just like in-person clinical services with no additional requirements.
This accessibility permits healthcare organizations to save time and devote the time in developing better training materials for the staff. For example, if a patient is suffering from chronic disease, it allows the healthcare specialists to compare and update patient records for better medical decision making, which leads to better patient care and more efficient workflow. Some other examples are:
- Caloric intake or diet logging programs
- Remote infertility treatment and monitoring
- Tests that can be taken in-home, such as substance abuse that patients need to take to track their goals
- For chronic conditions like dementia, continuous surveillance monitors to help locate the patients
Are there any problems with RPM?
With help of this remote monitoring tools; patients are able to maintain independence and cost at minimum, and also prevent complications regarding their health. Though RPM reduces hospital visits and healthcare costs, there are concerns in efficiency pertaining to security, connectivity and regulatory compliance. Some ways to solve this efficiency issues is to focus on RPM features, such as:
- Smart connectivity
- Cloud-based platform
- AI-powered remote monitoring service
- Automated system testing framework
- Analytics and maintenance services
RPM is not accessible to everyone as it requires good broadband connectivity, which is sometimes hard to achieve for small practices and rural hospitals. Also seniors or older people find it difficult to use modern gadgets. Some healthcare professionals doubt that this technology can change behavior of high-risk patients, and likewise some patients are afraid that their private health data can be viewed/misused by some third party.
The most serious problem faced due to remote patient monitoring system is reliability. The reliability of data is questioned because of large variations of accuracy of the devices it uses. RPM is lucrative offer for patients and healthcare professionals, but it is still not available for all sick people depending on their remote location and accessing capabilities. The providers have to pay in order to engage patients and motivate them to use and gain trust in this system.
In spite of few drawbacks, there is positive Return of Investment from RPM technology and home based care. The providers are reducing hospital readmission penalties by enabling this home-based healthcare and other telehealth delivery methods as it saves travel time and expenses. It also allows the patients and providers to consult specialized providers/ specialists for additional opinions and training.
About Author: Jessy Browne is a versatile writer who has wide knowledge in healthcare system. Has written plenty of interesting material and now is currently working with a reputed healthcare company to gain more knowledge on an emerging subject such as Remote Patient Monitoring.
