The Goal of RPM is Management, Not Monitoring

The following is a guest article by Lucienne Ide, MD, PhD, Founder and CEO at Rimidi Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a key capability in healthcare, particularly as we have seen multiple factors align in recent years: advances in medical device technology, decreased cost of cellular connectivity, new reimbursement models, and consumer demand that accelerated during the pandemic. RPM offers the ability to follow the patient from the clinic to the home and to provide a more complete picture of their health by collecting daily metrics such as blood pressure, blood glucose, weight, pulse oximetry, etc. But the healthcare industry needs to look at RPM as a tool in the toolkit for managing health conditions. The goal is management. Remote monitoring is one strategic capability for how we get there.  As a clinician, I’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of RPM. Early efforts to deploy remote monitoring tools and technologies faced multiple challenges. Prior to the introduction of RPM reimbursement codes in the Physician Fee Schedule in 2019, financial hurdles made it difficult for medical practices to perform remote monitoring activities as there was not a mechanism for reimbursement to cover the cost of the devices and the practice’s time unless the practice was part of a value-based contracting model and assumed the cost as part of their model of care delivery. In addition to the financial barriers, lack of broadband infrastructure and the slow digital transformat...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Chronic Conditions CMS Data Connection Data Interoperability Digital Transformation EMR Fi Source Type: blogs