A Practitioner’s Experience using RPM to Increase Patient Adherence and Improve Patient Outcomes
Recently featured in Telehealth and Medicine Today, CareTrack Health experts gave insight into RPM in CCM.
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Remote patient monitoring (RPM) has been used in the U.S. for more than 50 years. It was first used during a collaboration between NASA and Kaiser Permanente in the 1970s. NASA used RPM’s potential for post-Apollo, long-duration manned space flight, and Kaiser was interested in population health.
Since then, RPM has continued to advance and plays a key role in primary care and virtually all sub-specialties.
Another important application showing great promise: chronic care management (CCM). There is tangible proof of its ability to impact the Triple Aim of improving patients’ quality, reducing practice costs and making healthier populations.
Two trends driving increased adoption of RPM:
- COVID and the resulting increase in out-of-office care
- Value-based care support from providers, private payers and governments
Current Landscape
Since the pandemic, telehealth has increased by more than 40%. In fact, emergency department visits decreased substantially suggesting a long-term and durable change in out-of-office patient support.
Value-Based Care
Practices are responding to the challenge of value-based care. CareTrack allows practices to be involved in patients’ care over a longer span of time and beyond only office visits. This focuses on improving patient adherence, which helps patients follow their care plans between office visits along with collecting and analyzing clinical data to adjust care plans in an efficient and timely manner.
Remote Monitoring for Medicare Patients
It is necessary for Medicare patients to understand the role of CareTrack’s monitoring equipment. The number of Americans ages 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years. The chronic disease challenge faced by this population will require resources to monitor health conditions and use the data to improve adherence.
Digital health literacy is one of the biggest barriers to patient adherence. Important aspects to improve this include:
- For each patient, there should be an assessment, including physical and cognitive capabilities.
- Ask if there are any language, cultural or literacy barriers that would impede success.
- Ask if there are physical limitations that bear on the patient’s ability to use the device and/or interact with the CareTrack Care Team.
- Configure packages that require minimal setup and configuration requirements.
Conclusions
Physicians and health systems are finding that their ability to manage population health depends on the extent and availability of up-to-date patient data. Given recent advancements in technology and cultural acceptance of digital devices, Medicare patients are able and willing to use CareTrack’s monitoring technology. Medicare populations can benefit the most but present special challenges.
Allow CareTrack to help your practice overcome these challenges by using our Patient Adherence Solution. Read more in Telehealth and Medicine Today.