It’s undeniable that the most important benefit of remote patient monitoring is that clinicians can stay vigilant about their patients’ treatment-sensitive cases that often have a high risk of morbidity.
In a way, RPM offers a clinical focus on conditions that require more attention from doctors and other healthcare professionals.
For instance, with RPM for congestive heart failure, doctors can monitor the patients’ weight, salt intake, and medication intake and intervene when necessary. Without RPM, patients may be required to visit the clinic every six weeks, but even at that frequency, providers could miss out on opportunities to provide much-needed extra care.
However, successful RPM is dependent on various factors. Here are some of the most important practices health organizations should follow to ensure a successful RPM program:
1. Plan Carefully Before Starting
Before investing in an RPM solution, health organizations should carefully plan their RPM program. Planning includes:
- Analyzing patients’ current needs.
- Determining target patients.
- Deciding on the type of equipment used to monitor patients.
This will help health organizations to improve their RPM outcomes.
For instance, if the health institution is looking for a solution that will primarily monitor patients with chronic diseases, they should consider investing in a solution that can track chronic and acute conditions.
2. Execute Clinical Communication Effectively
Clinical communication is essential to achieving the optimal benefits of RPM. The solution provider should develop an effective clinical communication strategy so that providers can quickly intervene to improve patients’ conditions. At the same time, the solution should also facilitate clinical collaboration so that providers can talk to each other about the patients’ treatment progress.
For example, health organizations can enable providers to share patient information, along with the equipment status. This will help them to manage patient treatment more efficiently.
3. Enable Clinicians to Focus on Patients’ Specific Needs
It’s crucial for health organizations to know what patients want. Unfortunately, most of the time, this is not the case. This is why some of the most successful RPM programs enable providers to create custom alerts for patients. To make sure that the patient is comfortable with them, the provider should create customized alerts relevant to each patient.
Patients suffering from congestive heart failure often face dehydration, for instance. If the patient is not taking medications or following dietary restrictions, the provider can create alerts for this.
4. Make sure that the Alerts are Relevant
Health organizations should ensure that the alerts the solution is sending are relevant to the patients’ conditions. This will not only ensure that the patients are getting immediate care but also that the solution is not overburdening them with irrelevant alerts. For instance, providers can frequently monitor a patient’s weight and blood pressure, but the data may not be relevant to them if the patient is not undergoing treatment.
5. Encourage Patient Participation
Patient participation is a critical aspect of a successful RPM program. Encouraging patients to participate will help them better understand the importance of the treatment and prevent some of the common side effects.
For example, some patients experiencing congestive heart failure may experience weight gain as a side effect of some medications. However, using an RPM solution can enable providers to track the patients’ weight and take appropriate actions as required. This will not only help the patient prevent weight gain but also allow the health organization to take preventive measures for other patients as well.
Conclusion
Remote patient monitoring is a critical factor that has enabled healthcare organizations to achieve better patient outcomes. However, it is important to remember that the right solutions will only help you achieve optimal results if you follow the correct practices. In this sense, choosing an effective RPM solution is not enough. You should also ensure that you are following the right optimization practices to ensure that your patients receive the most from remote patient monitoring.
Medistics Health’s Remote Patient Monitoring system can help you establish and maintain effective RPM for your patients. Contact us today to know more!