Remote Patient Monitoring – Patient Benefits
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) provides a variety of benefits for both the practice and the patients. RPM helps alleviate the financial and logistical challenges of Transporting a patient to a physician’s office. This accounts for over 30 million American who are located more than an hour from a trauma care center. Connecting digitally with providers via RPM allows more opportunities for care, regardless of the location.
Costs are also reduced: A recent study by Medicare Advantage showed that nearly 50% of patients has not visited a PCP in the past year. Commonly cited reasons were the difficulty in scheduling (requesting time off, making arrangements for children, etc.). RPM allows patients to reduce these costs and time constraints.
Other Patient Benefits Include:
◾ Early detection – Quick, timely care is a matter of life and death. Remote patient monitoring helps to improve outcomes by allowing providers to detect any problems or complications nearly instantly. The provider is able make real-time diagnosis and suggest a treatment plan.
◾ Patient engagement – Patients who are involved in remote monitoring are empowered to be more involved in their care, due to increased interaction between the patient and the healthcare provider. Studies have shown that increased engagement can improve compliance and outcomes.
Providers Benefits are extensive an include:
◾ More accessible patient data – More consistent and accurate data from patients allows for practitioners to provide more advanced care. Physicians can monitor patient conditions in real time, performing routine tests, etc.
◾ Better care, reduced workloads – According to a recent study by the American Academy of Family Physicians, providers see an average of almost 20 patients daily. Remote Patient Monitoring allows stress and burnout alleviation by limiting the number of face-to-face visits to those with the most demanding medical needs.
◾ More time and care for patients – Remote patient monitoring helps to increase the amount of time available to spend with patients, by reducing the need to check vital signs and fill out lengthy lifestyle questionnaires.
◾ Lower operational costs – According to a recent study by the Healthcare Intelligence Network, nearly 70% of healthcare providers named remote patient monitoring as their top cost savings.
Provider Reimbursement
◾ In 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began reimbursing healthcare providers for some telehealth and remote patient monitoring. Three CPT codes were added to differentiate between general telehealth and remote patient monitoring for patients with chronic conditions:
CPT Codes:
◾ 99453 – Patient Educate of RPM Equipment and Plan of Care: This code covers any training and the process of introducing the patients to the equipment – $18 (one-time).
◾ 99454 – Equipment and Monitoring Costs: In-home devices create logs of measurements which are collected and reviewed by the provider – $54 (monthly).
◾ 99457 – Physiological Monitoring: Compensates the physician or designee (supervised by the physician and qualified to do so) for 20 minutes of time in a 30-day period – $62 (monthly).
◾ To bill for these services through Medicare or Medicaid, you must utilize a RPM device that is FDA approved. The patient must opt-in to the service, and it needs to be prescribed by a healthcare provider. Please note that remote patient monitoring can be billed alongside chronic care management.
RPM Considerations
Patients with ongoing health issues are the best candidates for remote patient monitoring. These remote monitoring patients are best suited for the program if these health issues can be improved from the data gathered while monitoring. Trial runs of RPM should be conducted with those patients most open to remote monitoring, as this will provide the most consistent data.
Care coordination is best managed by designing an efficient workflow that delegates some aspects of patient care to your on-premise staff. Nurses are excellently-equipped to hand daily or weekly care coordination and management tasks. Physicians and other specialists should only step-in as required.
Program length is highly dependent on the particular patient. For some patients, such as those with COPD, heart disease, or diabetes, an RPM program may last through the life of the patient. For other, non-chronic conditions, deadlines can be setup based on rates of readmission. Please note however, that in order to bill for Medicare or Medicaid patients for RPM services, the length of the program must be at least 16 days.
Geesemed:
◾ When it comes to providing the best RPM technology to those patients who are suffering from chronic and non-chronic ailments, GeeseMed is breaking boundaries and setting the industry standard.
◾ We have the ability to monitor patients with a variety of conditions, including COPD, obesity, diabetes, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, and more.
◾ By partnering with GeeseMed, you’ll enjoy working with a team of experienced healthcare professionals, who put customer service and the patient experience first. Our solution is unobtrusive and attractive, but also simple and easy to use. This makes it perfectly for elderly patients who do not regularly interact with technology. No apps to download, or setup!
◾ We put patients first. We are dedicated to lowering readmission rates and improving patient outcomes while lowering your costs.