Remote patient monitoring has been around for many years, but the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its use. It involves providing patient care while leveraging technology to gather patient data. It offers a wide range of benefits to the healthcare system, patients, and healthcare providers.
Here are some of the main benefits of remote patient monitoring:
Reduced Disease Transmission
Remote patient monitoring has reduced the risk of disease transmission, which is often the case with hospital-based care. Homebased care ensures that patients vulnerable to infectious diseases eliminate unnecessary exposure. This included chronically ill patients, pregnant, the elderly, or other immunocompromised patients.
Improved Data-Driven Decision Making
RPM improves clinical insights on patients’ in-between visits by offering tools that help inform proactive healthcare delivery. With remote patient monitoring, caregivers can monitor how patient symptoms can change over time and allow them to identify the trends that could help them alter the patient’s care for good.
Reduces Costs
Remote patient monitoring helps reduce unnecessary ED utilization and eliminates the need for unnecessary hospital admissions and readmissions. It allows acute discharge and ED diversion, resulting in shorter hospital stays and lower costs.
It also allows the movement of appropriate chronic and acute care levels at home, reducing the high cost of inpatient services.
Improved Self-Management and Care Plan
Remote patient monitoring allows condition-specific, easy-to-use tools for conditions such as post-surgical recovery, malignant neoplasms, and maternal and child needs to help efficiently manage their conditions.
It Helps Build Patient Engagement
Remote patient monitoring is an excellent patient engagement strategy. It provides patients with tools that help them understand their health better. This way, they know their conditions, unique care plan, and role in improving their health.
Once patients understand what is expected of them, they will likely care for themselves better and have positive health outcomes. RMP allows health education materials to patients that improve patient engagement.
Combats Clinical Staff Shortages and Optimized Clinical Staff Efficiency
Remote patient monitoring allows caregivers to prioritize each patient’s care while triaging each patient on a case-to-case basis and close real-time patient status. Additionally, remote patient monitoring tools integrate with EMR and help reduce duplicative documentation.
If faced with a severe staff shortage, remote patient monitoring helps reduce the burden of the over schedules in-person visits by providing clinical care virtually. It enhances a team-based care model allowing for provider flexibility.
Improved Patient Satisfaction and Experience
Remote Patient Monitoring meets patients at their homes or where they want to be met. This means that patients do not need to go to the hospital or get admitted allowing them to receive efficient and safe care in their comfort.
Improves Retention and Referral Opportunities
Remote Patient Monitoring will often lead to increased referrals and revenue for specialists and hospitals offering the service. Offering access to personalized care through technology provides a competitive advantage against competitors and allows you to attract new patients while improving patient retention rates.
Customer-driven care allows you to dictate your pay since your patients are ready to pay higher for convenience while remaining loyal to you.
Improved Patient-Clinician Relationship
Remote patient monitoring offers patients and clinicians a better opportunity to communicate. This helps strengthen their relationship while improving patient loyalty and satisfaction. It also gives patients a comforting perception that their caregivers care about them since they always reach out to them.
Improved Access to Care
Remote patient monitoring bridges the barrier of access to care from hospitals. Patients can easily access healthcare from a specialist when needed without making long travels.
RPM is used to reach patients in inaccessible rural areas and connect them to a specialist they would not readily have access to. It also serves as an excellent way to reduce appointment breaches in the hospital system.
It Boosts Net Patient Revenue
Remote patient monitoring reduces the cost of caring for a patient. Virtual patient care costs much less than onsite care due to enhanced staff productivity, improved workflows, and reduced administrative costs. It also provides opportunities for competitive advantage and reimbursement.
Remote patient monitoring is a fast-growing sector in the health industry. It helps provide patients with improved care and more engagement and allows clinicians to improve their revenue while improving the quality of their services.
