Monthly Archives: May 2020

Preventive Care through Remote Patient Monitoring – Power of RPM

Understanding Preventive Care Services

Preventive Care services are to help people stay healthy and to detect or diagnose health-related issues early while there is a higher chance of recovery. Preventive Care Services include periodic health check-ups, patient counseling, and screening to prevent health-related issues.

Remote Patient Monitoring and Its Acceptance

Remote Patient Monitoring is a method of healthcare delivery that is a part of Telehealth technology to gather patient data outside the traditional care settings. It is the use of specific technology to simplify the interaction between providers and patients at a remote location (home, nursing care facility, remote area or anywhere outside of conventional clinical settings. Remote patient monitoring is one of the tools that can bridge the current gap in patient engagement.

Currently, 88% of hospitals are investing or considering to invest in remote patient monitoring. In fact, 68 percent of physicians “strongly intend” to use remote monitoring technology in the future, according to a new study by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).

How does Remote Patient Monitoring help providers?

Providers can use remote patient monitoring to manage the health of high-risk patients, patients at-risk for hospital readmissions, monitor patients with chronic conditions, track patients post-discharge, check on senior patients, and to increase value-based care adoption. Remote Patient Monitoring helps providers detect any changes in patients before it shows visible symptoms.

How does Remote Patient Monitoring help patients?

Patient participation in the remote monitoring program helps patients avoid unnecessary clinic visits and potential emergency department visits(ER Visits). Remote patient monitoring provides monitoring and support at home to help patients reach their healthcare goals.

How does Remote Patient Monitoring help payers?

Remote patient monitoring connects all involved in the care cycle - providers, patients, and payers. Communication and exchange of information is much quicker and transparent which can help prevent emergencies, hospitalization, reduce readmissions, and mainly reduce costs. According to the KLAS Research report that surveying 25 healthcare organizations found 38% of healthcare organizations running RPM programs focused on chronic disease reported reduced admissions, and 17% cited cost reductions.

With such benefits it’s quite easy to understand why remote patient monitoring is burgeoning. As the RPM technology adoption continues to expand, it helps to have a positive effect on patients, providers, and the payers.

Adoption of various healthcare technology solutions are driven by various underlying factors like increasing healthcare costs, rise in baby boomer population, chronic conditions, and many more. Out of which chronic conditions are considered to be one of the main factors that need attention. More than 133 million Americans representing 45% of the U.S. population have at least one chronic disease. Chronic diseases are responsible for seven out of every 10 deaths in the United States, killing more than 1.7 million Americans every year.

Are you planning for Remote Patient Monitoring, Chronic Care Management, Telehealth, Care Management, Referral Management, or other similar solutions? Schedule a demo today! We are here to help you get started!

Provide uninterrupted care for your chronic patients during a pandemic outbreak

The COVID-19 outbreak has placed an unprecedented demand on health systems. Health systems and health workers on the front line are swamped by a plethora of activities related to the pandemic like identifying and isolating infected patients, providing care to them, ensuring it doesn’t spread to other patients, and themselves. Due to this, the delivery of essential health services which communities expect from providers is at high risk.

Focusing on a pandemic contingency plan and providing continued care for other essential health services are equally important. This will not only help gain people’s trust in the health systems but also reduce mortality from other health conditions.

Why shift to Preventive Care?

Preventable hospital readmissions are estimated to account for more than $17 billion in Medicare expenditures each year, and some of those Medicare costs are passed on to hospitals in the form of penalties. High medicare costs are a direct consequence of low patient engagement. During this time of the COVID-19 crisis, it is more important than ever to manage patients with chronic conditions to reduce costs.

One of the key strategies for providers to help their chronic patients is extending chronic care management to their homes. Providers should take a more proactive role in keeping their patients engaged in the process of care to manage their chronic conditions in a better way.

In a survey conducted by West, only 39% of respondents admitted they were only somewhat knowledgeable, at best, about how to effectively manage their condition. There is a serious gap among patients when it comes to managing their chronic conditions. Patients may not know how to check their vitals, how to follow a specific diet for their medical condition, health alert threshold, might not know their care plan, etc. Getting patients to understand certain metrics is important for reducing complications of their condition.

Chronic care management is necessary for patients because chronic patients contribute to 75% of hospital visits. In one of the articles, it is said that patients enrolled in Chronic Care Management Programs had significantly fewer hospital readmissions than routine care patients had.

How CCM benefit patients?

Patients involved in CCM services are healthier and happier. Patients get involved and engage in the management of the day-to-day activities in their care. Even during this time of crisis, they feel cared and see their care coordinators as a supporter, and they don’t feel alone.

How does CCM help your practice?

By offering CCM practices will not only see improved quality metrics but also high returns. It is great to get paid for something that is already being performed by clinical staff. Chronic Care Management helps increase your practice’s revenue as the CCM program directly translates into higher revenue. The more patients enroll the more the revenue.

Apart from increased revenue Chronic Care Management has several successful outcomes like

Better patient satisfaction and outcomes
Increased patients' compliance with medication therapy
Reduced hospitalizations and emergency department visits
Improved clinical quality and metrics
Reduced clinical staff time

Enrolling more patients in CCM programs is just perfect for providers to take care of their chronic patients during this time of crisis.

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Automates and streamlines the entire process, and makes it easier for your staff to provide CCM services seamlessly.

HealthViewX Chronic Care Management Full Service

HealthViewX also provides end-to-end CCM services through our network of seasoned RNs and CMAs that enable you to increase your monthly reimbursements without incurring any additional cost of hiring additional staff or investing in technology solutions.

Interested in learning more? Schedule a demo and talk to our solution experts. Our experts will help you implement the solution or service, and get your practice started in a jiffy to provide uninterrupted care for your patients!

Capitalize on the Benefits of Telehealth to Ensure Care and Business Continuity Amid COVID- 19

The adoption of telemedicine shifted into hyper-drive over the past month, with virtual health-care interactions on pace to top 1 billion by year’s end, according to analysts at Forrester Research.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many barriers obstructed the lack of adoption of Telehealth. Cost/ budget, different opinions in consensus decision-making, implementation challenges, migration from the current process, upkeep of old technology, delay in decisions, many physicians seeing technology as impersonal, etc. were all some of the barriers to adoption. But now all of those barriers have dramatically collapsed.

Shift in care delivery mode amid the COVID 19 Pandemic

Hospitals and health systems everywhere are staring at a sharp slump in revenue. To stay afloat healthcare systems are exploring and evaluating a variety of virtual care models, and ramping up Telehealth adoptions. Their technology teams are working around the clock to deliver infrastructure support to facilitate Telehealth. Health systems are urging their physicians and patients to obviate the need for in-person visits, and instead use Telehealth visits to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

March Telehealth visits surged 50% amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to research from Frost and Sullivan consultants.

Virtual Care is the need of the hour:

Virtual care/appointments have quickly become one of the most important tools to ensure care continuity for patients while keeping safe during this pandemic. One of the Telemedicine providers has reported a spike in video requests to more than 15,000 per day. Forrester expert analysts estimate that virtual visits could top 900 million this year based on the current projections for coronavirus infections in the US.

Enabling Change – Telehealth into the spotlight

The care that used to take place only in brick-and-mortar settings can now occur digitally. Telehealth is stepping up into the spotlight and helping providers to ensure care continuity. Hospitals are enabling changes to assure care delivery, provide uninterrupted care, meet the needs of their staffs, and complement their existing workflows in the current scenario. It is evident that hospital CIOs should invest in Telehealth technology to help care continuity while also ensuring business continuity.

Telehealth is part of a larger digital transformation in health care. Telehealth technology benefits hospitals and health systems in many ways and some of them are enumerated below:

Improves patient engagement, builds capacity to expand access, improves outcomes & reduce costs
Increases specialist access availability and capacity, provides 24/7 access to care, improves access & fill gaps in care
Enables virtual care and virtual appointment
Enhances clinical relationships with partners and within specialty networks.
Implementation/expansion of value-based care models.

Apart from the ones listed above, Telehealth helps in point of access for urgent care, specialty consults, post-discharge management, health counseling, chronic care management, referral management, and many more.

Telehealth usage has expanded recently in many use cases. Some of them are listed below:

eConsult - Templated communications where PCP’s consult with specialists to send and receive information on patient care and discuss patient care.

Virtual Care - Distant specialists connect in real-time to a PCP or a clinical setting to deliver care.

Remote-patient Monitoring - Providers remotely monitor patients via connected/mHealth devices.

Virtual Appointments/ Video Visits - Provider connects directly with the patient via video to conduct the equivalent of a visit.

eVisit - Provider connects with patients via email or secure messaging to provide clinical advice or support.

Patient Acceptance of Telehealth Services - Among patients surveyed after their initial encounter, 97% were satisfied with the experience and would recommend the program, and 74% felt that the interaction actually improved their relationship with their provider.

Why Telehealth?

Health care providers saved almost $2,750 per patient when using Telehealth instead of in-person physical therapy when discharged after knee-replacement surgery.

Health systems that don’t address the expectations of their patients will be challenged by competitors and new market entrants. Telehealth helps to treat patients in a more effective way, and is an efficient way to use limited staff and resources. Telehealth will help reduce costly readmissions, improve clinical outcomes, and make healthcare services even more impactful.

Development or strengthening of health systems or hospitals can be leveraged across multiple sites by connecting physicians, specialists, imaging or diagnostic centers, hospitals, etc. Virtual care will not only improve the care quality and health outcomes but also will improve timing by eliminating travel and as well bringing in specialized care as and when needed.

Are you looking for Telehealth Services for your patients?

Schedule a demo and talk to our solution experts. Our experts will help you implement the solution and get your practice started with Telehealth Services in a jiffy!