Remote Medical Monitoring Reduces Admissions in Heart Disease

Remote monitoring can support patient engagement and home-based care, but its impact on readmissions and outcomes varies by patient population and program design.

Historical context (November 2026): This article preserves September 2015 reporting. Patient examples and market forecasts are historical, not proof of current clinical outcomes or market size. Remote patient monitoring may support care between visits, but results depend on clinical protocols and patient needs, and devices are not substitutes for emergency care. For current program design guidance, see HHS remote patient monitoring guidance and CMS readmissions program guidance.

September 11, 2015 by Vera Gruessner

Remote medical monitoring was expanding in U.S. healthcare when this article was written in 2015. Some patients with heart disease use home devices to transmit measurements to a clinical team. Depending on the equipment and care program, out-of-range readings may trigger alerts for review; timely follow-up requires defined staffing and escalation procedures. Remote monitoring devices are not emergency-response systems.

Remote medical monitoring equipment has helped one 78-year-old patient reside at home and receive appropriate care, according to The Wall Street Journal. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center sent the patient a wireless router, pressure cuffs, and a meter to track the elderly man’s blood pressure and blood-oxygen levels.

“I don’t have to do anything other than use the equipment,” Richard Setzenfandhad, a 78-year-old retired accountant, spoke about the benefits of remote medical monitoring.

The remote medical monitoring equipment helped the cardiologist change the dosage of two heart medications to better treat the patient at hand. For this patient, monitoring helped inform the medication adjustment between visits. Whether a particular program reduces clinic visits or emergency department use depends on patient needs, monitoring protocols, and how the care team responds.

Some early hospital pilot programs reported encouraging results with remote monitoring, but such results should not be generalized to all programs. Home measurements may help clinicians identify problems earlier when data are reviewed and acted upon, although the technology itself does not guarantee improved outcomes.

Remote monitoring has been used to follow selected patients with heart failure, diabetes, and respiratory conditions. Evidence that it reduces hospital use is mixed and depends on the intervention: a 2021 systematic review of noninvasive heart-failure telemonitoring found that most included studies did not show a statistically significant reduction in overall hospitalizations or emergency department visits, although some studies did report reductions.

“This system has made such a big change in my asthma,” David Hogben, a 44-year-old San Diego resident, told the source.

CMS reduces Medicare payments to certain hospitals with excess 30-day readmissions under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, which began in fiscal year 2013. That program is separate from the former electronic-health-record meaningful-use incentive framework. Remote monitoring may support care coordination, but its cost and clinical value need to be evaluated for each program rather than assumed.

“We are under considerable pressure all around to deliver better outcomes and keep costs down,” Ravi Ramani, director of the Integrated Heart Failure Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, or UPMC, told The Wall Street Journal. “What we’re trying to do is use technology [in order to succeed in these goals].”

The original September 2015 report cited a forecast of $32 billion in remote-monitoring equipment sales for that year and a Kalorama Information projection of 9.2 percent annual growth from 2014 to 2019. These figures are historical forecasts, not verified sales totals or present-day market estimates.

One issue, however, of developing this type of remote medical monitoring programs is the potential lack of reimbursement from health insurers. Providers are often unable to take in the costs of the equipment necessary to track heart failure patients remotely. Some physicians have also complained about the excess of patient data that makes it difficult to determine overall health status, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Nonetheless, these type of programs help educate patients on their conditions and engage them in ways to monitor their diet and exercise more closely. Often nurses help better prepare patients in medication management before allowing them to be tracked via remote monitoring technology at home.

“We see patients for only 15, 20 minutes at a time, but there is so much more that goes on in patients’ lives, so we are trying to be out there with patients, at their homes, at their workplaces and in their communities [through remote monitoring],” Parag Agnihotri, director of the Continuum of Care programs at Sharp HealthCare’s Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group in San Diego, told the news source.