Remote monitoring technology boosting better patient engagement and reducing hospital readmission rates, it’s a win-win situation in healthcare.

September 11, 2015 by Vera Gruessner

Remote medical monitoring is becoming more mainstream across the healthcare industry in this country. Often, patients with heart disease benefit from having monitoring equipment available in their home so their doctors can track their health while at the hospital. These technologies have alarms that warn nurses of potential cardiovascular issues a patient may have.

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. Such technology is able to reduce the need for a patient to make an appointment with his doctor or visit the emergency room.

Hospitals that have adopted pilot programs using remote medical monitoring technology have seen significant improvements in patient health outcomes. Essentially, doctors and nurses are able to find cardiovascular problems through remote medical monitoring equipment before they grow too serious.

Along with heart failure patients, diabetes as well as asthma are also common conditions that remote medical monitoring technology can track from afar. Hospitals using these systems seem to report lower readmission rates among its patient communities.

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

Under meaningful use requirements, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have been focused on reducing hospital readmission rates and have even reduced reimbursement among healthcare systems with high readmission rates. In order to reduce medical costs and improve outcomes, remote monitoring technology would be a vital resource to invest in.

“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 remote monitoring market is also gaining strength. Sales of this equipment are predicted to reach $32 billion this year. Additionally, Kalorama Information predicts an annual growth rate of 9.2 percent from 2014 to 2019.

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.

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By Kyle Murphy, PhD on May 26, 2015

More good news! The telehealth adoption section of the 21^st Century Cures Act is pending review from the House of Representatives.

After receiving the unanimous support of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, the 21st Century Cures Act now awaits the consideration of the entire House of Representative, including its provisions for expanding use of telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries.

The purpose of the introduced legislation (HR 6) is “to accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st century cures, and for other purposes” and telehealth falls under the third category of delivery along with interoperability and continuing medical education for physicians.

Chief among its telehealth provisions, the 21st Century Cures Act calls on the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide Congress with reports on four areas.

The first would comprise an account of Medicare beneficiaries “whose care may be improved most in terms of quality and efficiency by the expansion … of telehealth services under section.” The second would provide an account of the work by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation on telehealth adoption and use. The third would detail high-volume procedure and diagnostic codes that “might be suitable to the furnishing of services via telehealth.” The last would identify barriers in the way of expanding telehealth services.

CMS would be required to furnish Congress with information in a year’s time following the enactment of the proposed bill. Through the bill, Congress would seek similar information from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC).

The remaining telehealth-related components of the 21st Century Cures Act provide insight into the federal government’s vision for the future of telemedicine.

First, Congress indicates that states need to address provider licensure through the use of “common licensure requirements services in order to facilitate multistate practices and allow for health care providers to provide such services” in multiple states.

Second, the proposed bill identifies the physical location of the patient receiving services in determining appropriate licensing.

Third, Congress looks to expand eligible originating sites.

Lastly, the 21st Century Cures act specifies how the Medicare program should go about expanding telehealth services:

(A) recognize that telemedicine is the delivery of safe, effective, quality health care services, by a health care provider, using technology as the mode of care delivery;

(B) meet or exceed the conditions of coverage and payment with respect to the Medicare program under title XVIII unless specifically address in subsequent statute, of such Act if the service were furnished in person, including standards of care; and

(C) involve clinically appropriate means to furnish such services.

The most current version of the proposed bill does little to address the criticism of the likes of the American Telemedicine Association which recently found fault with its plans to commission another series of reports rather than adopting new measures.

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