Remote patient monitoring has been a blessing for healthcare providers worldwide and for good reasons. Balancing both the sides of finance and quality care on the scale of healthcare practice, patients and providers have welcomed remote patient monitoring programs with open arms.
That is the reason, that almost 65% to 70% of the patients are willing to participate in RPM programs for continuous monitoring and proactive healthcare. This is one of the reasons why half of the providers are looking to start RPM programs, while the other half are looking for the exclusive high return on investments of starting remote patient monitoring programs.
In this blog post, we’ll look at both sides of remote patient monitoring and try to find how remote patient monitoring has become the future of the healthcare industry.
The Financial Benefits of Remote Patient Monitoring
Let’s have a look at the financial benefit of RPM programs and how they help healthcare providers lower their overall healthcare expenditures.
- Reduced Hospital Readmissions
The treatment for complex diseases is often time-consuming, and the results are often seen after a prolonged period of time. Though minor inconveniences are part of the process, the patients tend to be admitted to the hospital for that. This takes up most of the time and resources of providers, affecting their productivity while increasing the cost for both the parties involved.
However, with remote patient monitoring, providers can easily identify early warning signs of complications as they continuously monitor the patient’s health. This helps in preventing unnecessary hospital visits and readmission, allowing the patients to address their problems from home and providers to provide care to the patients at the hospital. And interestingly, a KLAS report suggested that the RPM program has resulted in almost 30% of cost reduction in overall spending on healthcare.
- Improved Chronic Disease Management
Managing chronic diseases is challenging on various levels. From careful observations to continuous monitoring and a holistic approach to care, it generally covers almost all aspects of care. Chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and COPD are some of the examples of this.
Since remote patient monitoring programs allow remote monitoring and consultations with patients, providers can proactively engage patients in their care activity. This way they can not only study their health vitals more carefully but also increase their medication adherence with respect to their care plan.
Along with that, it also allows providers to make necessary adjustments to their treatment plans to improve patient health outcomes and proper utilization of healthcare resources.
- Lower Healthcare Costs
With reduced readmission and improved chronic disease management, a significant portion of the healthcare staff is relieved from tiring and unnecessary patient care. Since the resources at the hospital are put to proper use, the return on investment becomes significantly higher, reducing the chances of cash or resources burning in the practice.
Along with that, with fewer in-person visits and lower emergency department utilization, the resources available at the healthcare facility are brought to their right use, giving hospitals a higher return on investment on each of their healthcare resources.
Beyond Cost Saving – The Clinical Advantage of RPM
With almost 70% of the patients being in favor of remote patient monitoring, you must be wondering why? Well, let’s explore the clinical benefits of remote patient monitoring and how it can change the nature of care delivery from reactive to proactive.
- Enhanced Patient Engagement
One of the reasons why remote patient monitoring has been favored by patients is for the transparency it brings while providing healthcare services. Giving them real-time access to their own health data and putting them in control of their care journey allows them to take a more active role in their health management.
Along with that, RPM provides comprehensive and valuable insights into patients’ daily health patterns which makes it easy for them to take enough preventive steps to avoid any complications in their health. This also fosters and improves communication between patients and providers leading to better adherence to their care, medication and treatment plans.
- Improved Quality of Life
By giving control of their health, remote patient monitoring helps care patients with chronic illness manage their chronic conditions better. Along with that, with secure communication channels, it also makes it easier for both healthcare providers and patients to proactively reach out to each other in case of any confusion or required consultations.
Along with that, with RPM telehealth integration for consultations and continuous monitoring of patients’ health, it leads to fewer hospitalizations and brings the factor of convenience while receiving care services.
This way RPM helps patients to improve their quality of life and cope with their degrading health effectively and efficiently.
- Early Detection of Health Issues
If you’re still reading this, then allow me to ask you a question. What is the need for continuous monitoring of health, especially vital signs?
Well, if you have thought of an answer then you must be somewhere near it. But let’s decode this in short here. Continuous monitoring of vital signs, equips healthcare providers with valuable insights of the unique health patterns of the patient and how the body is reacting to the treatment plan.
By identifying unique patterns and trends in patients’ health, providers can easily detect potential health problems and take proactive measures to prevent complications and improve patient health outcomes.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, remote patient monitoring helps healthcare institutes to balance both the aspects of the clinic along with adding the factor of comfort and convenience to it. By allowing remote monitoring of patients it helps in reducing the overall costs and expenditure on healthcare and on the other hand, by giving patients more control of their health it proactively improves patient health outcomes.
RPM software allows proper utilization of healthcare resources to save cost and by improving preventive care it helps in improving patient outcomes. In this way, remote patient monitoring is taking the help of digital transformation of the healthcare industry and changing its course from reactive healthcare services to proactive healthcare services.