As technology evolves, new healthcare solutions designed to improve the quality of patient care have been continuously emerging. These solutions make it a lot easier for healthcare professionals to diagnose, treat patients, and provide the appropriate care they need. One solution is remote patient monitoring, which is a form of chronic care management, helping patients to live more comfortably at home while being treated. RPM also makes a patient’s life easier, especially if they have difficulties going to the doctor’s office for their check-ups.
What Is Remote Patient Monitoring?
Remote patient monitoring, or RPM or remote patient management, is a healthcare delivery method that uses the latest innovations in information technology to gather patients’ data outside of conventional healthcare settings. It generally targets three patient populations—pre-chronic, chronic, and post-acute. It’s basically moving healthcare services from any traditional setting into the comforts of a patient’s home.
RPM provides direct patient care, regardless of the patient’s location. Ideally, when a patient is discharged and enrolled in RPM, the vital signs are logged at home and sent remotely to the care manager. Through this, they can monitor the patient and his/her compliance with the treatment plan recommended.
There are many benefits that RPM offers for clinicians, healthcare professionals, and patients, such as:
- Ease of access to patient data
- Improved patient’s quality of life
- Better access to healthcare
- Lower costs and higher efficiency for healthcare professionals
- Ability to deliver high-quality medical care to more patients in need
- An improved medical support, feedback, and education
- Daily assurance and peace of mind
The question is, how do you keep a successful remote patient monitoring? Here are some ways:
Clearly define and focus on the program
One of the most critical considerations for a successful RPM program is that it is able to demonstrate the program’s value of the investment and patient-focused efficiency. RPM is flexible and can be used to treat many patient populations and medical conditions. Clinicians and healthcare providers must be able to develop a clearly defined strategy and objectives.
Who are the target patient populations? What medical conditions are they going to care for? What are the expected results and benefits? There are many ways to approach and implement the program, but it is not designed for everyone. Targeting the right kind of patient population will likely result in positive outcomes.
Choose the right technology
To meet the objectives, providers must use the right kind of technology. It should be a system not only capable of rolling out the initial program successfully but also able to handle future expansions. Integration with the current software and systems is a consideration and can help reduce overhead costs. User experience is also a factor that can contribute to the success of RPM.
Robust analytics
Given the amount of data gathered to support remote patient monitoring, a robust analytics program is necessary. It is crucial to the success of the program because they are able to direct the attention of the care team to the most prescient information. Without strong analytics, those pertinent data produced and collected are not easily actionable.
Involve the care team and patients
For any digital health solution, RPM included, to be successful, both patients and the care team must understand and proactively take part in the change. Staff should be educated on the impact of the program, its importance, and their role in making the program successful. Having every healthcare staff on board will help to reduce errors, bottlenecks, duplication of errors, and guarantee the success of the program.
When it comes to patient involvement, they need to keep in mind some things:
- They have to be confident with the technology
- Know how the data they provide will contribute to their care and treatment
- Motivated to participate and actively engage in the program
- Empowered and knowledgeable about troubleshooting any problems they may encounter along the way
Know that the success of any connected healthcare program largely depends on the outcomes it delivers. Following basic guidelines during the initial process will help increase its success rate, with the ultimate advantage of providing better care for patients and making it easier for providers to deliver these results.
If you’re looking to use remote patient monitoring (rpm) in your healthcare program, get in touch with us to see how we can help.