Healthcare Leaders Report Growing Interest in Remote Patient Monitoring

Key Insights

• Research shows that the majority of healthcare leaders believe remote patient monitoring (RPM) will create a “new standard of care” over the next two years.
• Practices that currently use RPM reported improvements in patient engagement and revenue as well as greater bandwidth for “higher intensity office visits.
• Experts suggest increased integration and provider engagement in clinical informatics can help drive RPM adoption.

Study: Healthcare Leaders’ Growing Interest in RPM

A recent study by WebCareHealth indicated that 60 percent of C-suite and clinical leaders in healthcare believe RPM will become a “new standard of care over the next two years,” Healthcare IT News reports. Researchers found that 70 percent of those practices that currently use RPM noted improvements in patient engagement, satisfaction, and revenue. However, only 40 percent of physicians surveyed currently use the technology.

“RPM is used primarily today to treat acute patient needs. But what they don’t realize is: What they felt was the identification of a need, that is only touching the tip of the iceberg,” Teresa Sieck, Ph.D., CEO, President, Co-founder, and Chief Medical Officer at WebCareHealth, told Healthcare IT News. Dr. Sieck noted that with RPM’s “comprehensive real-time data collection, providers can treat immediate needs and proactively monitor trends for patients with chronic conditions.”

The Role of RPM in Value-Based Care

Another recent study showed that 66 percent of respondents believe the technology could help target care gaps. This capability could especially help close gaps for low-income, high-risk patients, for whom personalized outreach and tailored approaches work best, according to data from athenahealth.

Closing care gaps by proactively targeting potential health issues is a crucial component of value-based care. Predictive analytics could supplement and enhance RPM by segmenting patients “to create prioritized lists of patients for engagement,” according to Heather Lavoie, President and CEO of Geneia.

In order to spur fast yet successful adoption of RPM, Dr. Sieck advocates for data-driven provider education, noting: “Providers need to see proof that RPM is working and hear from others who use it and like it.”
Additionally, software developers should invite providers’ feedback into clinical informatics to help create a seamless, user-friendly design. Engaging and elevating providers in this way is a key factor of forward-looking physician enablement groups. According to Shawn Morris, CEO of Privia Health, and Keith Fernandez, MD, Chief Clinical Officer, this approach can help build “digital tools that work for — not against — providers.”

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