Remote Patient Monitoring, or RPM, is a modern and flexible approach to healthcare. It enables practitioners and clinicians to interact virtually with daily measurements transmitted directly from the patient to ensure real-time monitoring of their health. But these aren’t the only advantages of RPM.
As one of the many ways healthcare is adapting to provide greater personalization, convenience, and utilization of technology, RPM is universally beneficial for both patients and healthcare practitioners alike, resulting in improved patient outcomes, better care engagement, fewer hospitalizations, and increased revenues for medical service providers.
In this article, Wanda Health explores all these advantages to explain why RPM offers a distinct opportunity for further modernization of healthcare conventions as a targeted way to manage chronic, prevalent, and long-term conditions.
Not sure what RPM is? Read our guide: What is Remote patient monitoring?
9 benefits of RPM for patients and healthcare providers
1. Preventing Transmissions of Contagious Illnesses
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, society is far more conscious of the dangers of transmissible diseases and viruses, which can be extremely serious for vulnerable and at-risk patients. Allowing such patient groups to be monitored and treated from home eliminates any need to attend appointments in a hospital environment, significantly reducing any potential exposure to contagions.
Patients enrolled in an RPM program can send their medical readings remotely, remaining shielded from environments with greater risk of infectious diseases and ensuring that chronically ill, older, and pregnant patients access high-quality care without travel requirements.
Whether to protect immunocompromised patients from contracting contagious conditions in a clinical setting or to prevent patients with a transmissible disease from coming into contact with other patients, RPM provides an immediate solution.
2. Improved Care Accessibility and Use of Resources
Many hospitals, clinics, and specialist medical providers find that demand frequently outstrips capacity, making it harder to reach patients, particularly those in disengaged demographics and where there are barriers to care – such as an inability to travel, mobility restrictions, or distances between a rural residence and the nearest healthcare facility.
RPM offers convenience and inclusivity to any patient, in any location, and with any socioeconomic status, to access the same levels of support, treatment monitoring, and education without placing unnecessary pressure on services and hospital beds where this is unnecessary.
Patients can access professional medical support on their terms and in their own homes, a distinct improvement for parents with childcare issues, patients who cannot afford to take time away from work to attend regular appointments and physicians who can treat and monitor larger patient cohorts without needing to find more time or resources.
3. Faster Collection of Precise Patient Data for Clinical Decision-Making
In traditional healthcare, practitioners may have needed multiple in-person appointments with one patient to gather a picture of their overall health, understand how well treatment or protocols worked, and discuss the patient's response to medications and lifestyle changes.
FDA-approved RPM devices are accurate, reliable, and user-friendly, designed with functionality that any patient can easily use, whether monitoring blood pressure, weight, blood oxygen, or using a glucometer.
Data is transmitted securely and immediately to the authorized clinician, supporting more accurate, accelerated diagnoses and changes to treatment plans in response to real-time metrics while tracking measurements over time to understand patient symptoms.
4. Better Patient Engagement in Care Management
Self-adherence is a factor in the prevalence of many chronic conditions and for patients with multiple comorbidities. In many cases, physicians recommend a change to lifestyle from more active physical movement to adjustments to nutrition or suggestions to assist with making positive improvements to unhealthy behaviors.
RPM enables patients to take their own measurements daily and see how those readings change over time through the Wanda Health virtual care platform – rather than being bystanders in their care, RPM patients are active participants and play an important role.
Patients can see their readings and vital signs, engage in education resources to understand their health and what they can do to facilitate positive improvements and take responsibility for submitting measurements.
5. Augmented Patient Outcomes
Studies evaluating the efficacy of RPM have shown remarkable and sustained reductions in hospital admissions, emergency interventions, and readmissions for RPM patients being monitored post-treatment or post-surgery.
The speed and accuracy of data transmissions allow practitioners to swiftly detect warning signs and early indications of worsening health, comparing trends and measurements to previous patient data and establishing a more personalized tolerance of vital signs.
By reacting quickly, such as amending prescribed medications, advising on immediate changes to treatments, or adjusting protocols, clinicians can prevent hospitalizations, medical crises, and readmissions by reacting before a shift in a patient's condition becomes serious.
6. More Efficient Deployment of Clinical Staff
The healthcare sector commonly experiences shortages of medical expertise or increased demand on limited time, making it essential to improve the way clinical workflows and care delivery are managed and prioritized.
RPM programs effectively match clinician time to patient needs by issuing automated alerts when a reading indicates a concern. This process ensures that urgent patients are triaged and treated quickly without relying on previous patient status reports to make important decisions.
Integrating RPM devices and readings with Electronic Medical Records, or EMRs, means that healthcare organizations gain further efficiencies by removing instances of duplication and cutting time and cost pressures on clinicians by allowing them to deliver care virtually.
7. Cost Savings and Increased Service Revenues
The virtual nature of RPM means that it facilitates more cost-efficient care without frequent in-person visits and consultations, lowering hospital admissions and readmissions and delivering a better return for healthcare providers alongside improved patient outcomes and lower costs over the long term while a patient's health develops.
CPT billing codes continue to evolve to create more reimbursement categories tailored to the RPM care provided to each individual patient, ensuring practices and primary care providers can submit eligible reimbursement claims for each level of treatment offered.
Reducing admissions to emergency departments dramatically impacts healthcare cost reductions while removing preventable admissions, creating shorter average stays, and lowering overall care costs while targeting critical responses to acute and chronic care patients in greater need of interventions.
8. Improved Patient Satisfaction and Experiences
Finally, RPM is a tool that works to the advantage of practitioner and patient simultaneously, adapting the point of care to the patient rather than a service they must actively find. RPM ensures clinicians can leverage precise, frequent, and reliable monitoring data to make informed medical decisions.
We found that:
96% of patients using Wanda Health as part of their care management services would recommend it to family and friends
95% of patients were very satisfied using Wanda Health as part of their care management services
91% of patients followed their treatment plan using Wanda Health as part of their care management services
Patients enrolled in RPM programs have reported greater satisfaction with the care they receive, with enhanced communication opportunities through virtual consultations and interactions providing a cost-effective way for physicians and support staff to sustain beneficial relationships with their patient cohorts.
Are you a healthcare provider looking to enhance the care you offer your patients as well as tap into new revenue streams? Get in touch with Wanda Health today and speak to us about our innovative remote patient monitoring solutions.