What Is Remote Patient Monitoring?

Remote patient monitoring is a method of healthcare delivery that uses the latest technology to gather and analyze patient’s data outside of traditional healthcare offices. The main goal of RPM is to take healthcare out of the traditional offices and clinic settings so people can stay home and live their lives normally without the constant doctor visits and check-ups. These technologies build the bridge that improves the connectivity and quality of healthcare for the patients and the providers. 

RPM can be something as simple as wearing a FitBit or other health monitoring device that sends data and stats to your physician to analyze. Your physician and you can then work collectively to make changes to your lifestyle to improve your overall health and improve any medical conditions you may have. The devices used range depending on the condition that is being treated and the lifestyle of the patient. RPM focuses on fitting the lifestyle and needs of the patient and the devices are chosen accordingly. 

This technology helps patients to feel more comfortable with managing their own health and hold them accountable for their choices and habits. RPM can also help doctors maintain a steady measurement of the patient and their condition. Occasional visits only give physicians a snapshot look at your health while RPM gives them consistent measurements for them to analyze and make more consistent inferences about solutions and various treatments. It’s really easy for patients to go tell their doctor what they want to hear and that they have made changes to their health regardless of if they have or not and RPm allows the physician insight as to what is happening on a daily basis. 

Benefits of Remote Patient Monitoring

RPM comes with a variety of benefits to help improve the wellbeing of patients who have been discharged from medical institutions and maintain their overall health while living their lives normally. 

• Reduced Emergency Situations: This is one of the best benefits for both patients and healthcare providers using RPM. While emergency situations are one of the highest money makers for healthcare providers, the urgency can interfere with their quality of care with their other patients. It can also result in longer wait times for their other patients and cause their patient retention to decrease. For patients, these emergency visits can be very costly and result in very expensive procedures and treatments that could’ve been prevented with remote patient monitoring. RPM can also assist with preventing and predicting life threatening conditions.
• Less Burden on Healthcare Systems: Healthcare facilities can become very full and very fast and cause patients to wait a significant amount of time for them to be seen. Especially after Covid-19, many physicians have noticed an increase with patients in their offices and have reported a decrease in their quality of care because of all of their patients. The data from remote patient monitoring services are gathered remotely and therefore do not require the patient to visit the office every time data needs to be updated about the patient. Overall, RPM helps keep doctors offices and healthcare facilities clear and open enough to offer high quality care to all of their patients. 
• Higher Quality of Care: When healthcare facilities are too busy and physicians have to rush through their appointments to see as many of the patients as possible, the quality of the care they are giving is most likely decreasing, leaving patients feeling like they are just a number being passed from one doctor to the next. RPM prevents this by allowing the data to be gathered and sent to the physician directly to be analyzed and a treatment to be decided upon. 
• Increased Revenue: From the standpoint of the physicians, RPM is an excellent choice and offers them increased revenue as a benefit. Some providers receive grants or other reimbursement for the time they spend on remote tasks, such as reviewing the data collected from the patients. Physicians that offer RPM have significantly more revenue than those that do not. 

What Is Telehealth?

Telehealth has been around for a long time and is essentially electronic technology as a method of providing healthcare virtually. This method is ideal for situations where there is a distance between the provider and the patient, or in situations such as Covid-19 where patients are encouraged to not come into the office for safety reasons. Certain conditions do require a physical examination while others can be diagnosed and treated virtually while being handled professionally and effectively. 

One of the downfalls of using telehealth for medical treatment is that id technology fails or the patient does not have knowledge about how to set up the meeting, the provider may have to require the patient to come into the office anyway depending on their condition, and some conditions cannot be diagnosed or treated virtually. 

Benefits of Telehealth

Similarly to remote patient monitoring, telehealth comes with its own set of benefits. Such as:

• More Patients: Since telehealth is virtual, it allows physicians to spend less time transitioning between patients and more time with each patient individually. They can also expand their outreach to other areas than they would if the patients had to come into the office. Therefore, physicians can see more patients in less time and reach more people in a number of different ways. 
• Improved Efficiency and Workflow: Telehealth can improve the efficiency and workflow of medical institutions and can help everything run smoother and quicker. It also makes it easier for physicians to prioritize their treatment options and various patients. Not only is the performance improved but patients are also much more satisfied with their care than they would be if they had to come into the office. 
• Improved Patient Engagement: Over the years, hospitals and other medical institutions have developed new ways of interacting with their patients and encouraging them to practice self-care and take accountability for their own health. Using telehealth allows healthcare providers to provide proactive healthcare and prevent complications or chronic issues among patients. They can improve the outcomes of their patients while cutting costs. 

What Makes RPM and Telehealth Different?

In simple terms the biggest difference between remote patient monitoring and telehealth is that RPM uses technologies to interact with patients to interact with them from a distance, while telehealth encompasses the industry as a whole and the technologies used to provide this type of healthcare. Therefore, telehealth can include RPM but also many other things as well. Telehealth includes all types of technologies used to collect data and exchange information for providers to use and provide care to their patients. 

Also, telehealth is used more for the patient to be connected to a provider to receive treatment, while RPM can be used just by the patient to monitor their own health and make changes accordingly without a physician.

Remote Patient Monitoring is a subgroup of telehealth and uses technology to track patients data outside of the standard healthcare settings such as offices, clinics, and hospitals. RPM gathers information on the patient no matter where they are or what they’re doing and transmits the records to the patient’s healthcare provider. The goal of this technology is to reduce costs and provide proactive care while allowing the patients to go about their daily lives while tracking their healthcare outcomes. 

Many people when they think of Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) they think of all of the benefits that the services have for clinicians and physicians, such as lower risk for burnout for their staff, lowers costs, higher efficiency, and better quality healthcare, but maybe you’re wondering what benefits are there for patients with these services and if there even is any at all? The short answer is yes, there are several reasons why patients should consider using RPM and many benefits they can get out of it. With that said, there are many more benefits likely to emerge as the years go by with the consistent technological advances in the medical field. 

Patient Benefits of Using Remote Patient Monitoring

While this technology was becoming increasingly popular over the years to help reduce wait time in doctors offices and health patients lead healthier and happier lives without constant visits to their doctor, Covid-19 showed an even bigger increase to wait times. As a result, many physicians are pushing for RPM as a solution to offering quality healthcare while keeping non-emergency situations out of the office as much as possible. From the perspective of patients, there are numerous reasons why they should consider RPM as well. 

Better Access

Around the country, there has been an increase in healthcare insurance among people and has made it difficult for patients to access caregivers. Once they are able to make an appointment, the wait times are usually very long and make for an all day trip to the doctors office. RPM increases the capacity for physicians to treat more patients and expands access to healthcare for patients who either cannot stay at the doctor’s office all day long or cannot manage to get in to see a physician at all. 

Improved Management of Chronic Conditions

A large portion of the patients regularly seen in physicians offices are those with chronic conditions. These account for a large part of the healthcare costs around the nation and many of them are preventable if the patient had better access to the proper care. Even those that are not preventable can be better managed with RPM. Remote patient monitoring can improve the management of chronic conditions such as diabetes, blood pressure, and more with a collection of data and analysis of data related to their condition. When patients know what these numbers are and what they mean it can help them hit their targets and start improving their overall health. 

Reduced Emergent Situations and Readmissions

Patients with chronic conditions often are stuck with consistent hospital and doctor visits as well as emergent situations depending on their condition, and these can all add up to a significant amount of money needed for them to keep healthy. Remote patient monitoring helps patients measure their numbers within range, such as their blood sugar for example, and reduce risks of experiencing a serious and costly emergency situation. 

Improvement to Overall Health Practices

RPM can help catch values that are out-of-range that can be dangerous and help the patient identify trends that need to change. It can also aid in changing the care regimen, offer coaching on daily choices such as physical activity that many patients often push to the back-burner due to their lack of time. 

Increased Patient Accountability

Patients are kept more accountable for their helah and their choices they make that are contributing to their poor health. Some patients experience serious conditions as a result of not knowing their bad habits or by simply not caring, and RPm can help open their eyes to what needs to be done for them to live long and healthy lives. 

Patient Centered Healthcare

For patients using RPM they often report the collaborative effort between them and their physician to better their health. Their call isn’t about making the physician more money or about getting the patient in and out of the office as fast as possible, instead the physician can focus on providing patients with quality care and making them the center of their treatment solutions. 

Assurance

One of the best benefits that can come from patients using RPM to track their health is improved comfort and engagement from their physicians as well as assurance that an experienced professional is watching out for their health on a daily basis. There are a lot of patients who have problems with their heart, or blood pressure and watching their heartbeat on a monitor in the hospital for days or even weeks can be scary. RPM technology allows for this bridge to be gapped and for that connection to be made between the physician and the patient so they can feel like the healthcare team is home with them. Even when people know what they are watching for with their own health, they may not know exactly what to do when something goes wrong and having a physician in their pocket watching their health can help bring them peace of mind. 

Better Quality of Care

Not only can patients contact their caregivers more easily with RPM, but the quality of the care they receive is improved. As a patient, it can feel like you’re just a number or just a name on a paper when the physician’s office is full and you’re waiting to see. The staff may rush through your visit and may even miss things as a result of trying to see as many patients as possible. RPM connects clinicians more directly and provides relevant data on the patient so their daily routines are more efficient and the patient doesn’t feel like they are in a factory and being pushed through the line. Many patients who have used RPM feel more comfortable and familiar than attending their office visits in person. RPM also takes a group effort between the patients and the physicians to manage the patients health, which can help the patient to pay more attention and stay engaged in their own health. Patients will benefit by wanting to improve their health and learning how to do so. 

Improved Support, Feedback, and Education

The increased connectivity between patients and caregivers helps patients to expand their levels of education, support, and feedback about their health compared to traditional models of healthcare. Some patients need extra support and extra feedback to stay on top of their health and it’s important that they are able to read the information from their monitoring records to make changes accordingly. 

Learn More About CareXM Today

Using CAreXM remote patient monitoring services will provide you with all of these benefits and more and help you towards your journey to a healthier and happier life. 

Healthcare has changed significantly over the years, much like most other industries. One of the biggest changes however is the increased necessity for physician answering services. In the past these services were considered a commodity and rarely used by companies but now it is crucial in maintaining quality patient care around the clock and preventing physicians from overworking their employees. In a medical office, the phone line is the front line for patients making contact with your company and it is vital that they have a good first experience. 

Medical answering services offer after-hours answering services for physicians and ensures that patients calls are answered any day and at any time. The answering service provider can take messages, manager after-hour appointments and handle all urgent health situations patients may be having. These services are professional and will answer the incoming phone calls the exact same way your staff would. 

Key Benefits of a Physician Answering Service

There are so many reasons why physicians use medical answering services to assist their patients, and several benefits as to why physicians should start using these services if they aren’t already. 

• Increased effectiveness and productivity
• Reduce costs of staff
• HIPAA-compliant
• Better patient care and communication
• Improved patient retention
• Enhanced 24/7 patient care
• Reduces the administrative workload
• Adds more focus to your patients and their needs
• Urgent calls can be transferred immediately

A physician medical answering company acts as the face and voice of your practice and should be decided carefully. You should be able to trust the professionals with interacting and caring for your patients efficiently and professionally. 

Qualities of an Effective Physician Answering Service

Deciding on a physician answering service it can be difficult deciding which one is right for you and your practice. Providing quality care and retaining your patients should be a top priority for all physicians and therefore the service company you decide on. The following qualities are those you should look for when choosing a physician answering service to help you decide which professionals are best for representing you and your office. 

Track Record of Satisfied Clients

One of the most important qualities to look for while choosing an physician answering company is that they have a successful track record of satisfying past medical clients. Just like you would do if you were looking for someone to hire, you would look at their qualifications and ask around to their past employees to see how they are as an employee. In other words this is like checking on their track record in their field and working with other professionals in the workplace. The same should be done for answering services to ensure your patients will receive the best care whenever they need it. 

HIPAA Compliant

HIPPA refers to laws in place that are intended to protect the privacy and personal information of patients. This Act applies to all physicians and healthcare organizations in the medical field. It is imperative to choose a physician answering service that follows these guidelines and protects the information of your patients. When privary becomes an issue, especially in the medical field the risk of losing patients for good becomes high and may be extremely detrimental to your practice if you choose the wrong answering service to meet the needs of your patients. With CareXM, our operators are extensively trained and your patients privacy is handled carefully.

The Professionals Understand the Needs of Physicians and Has Experience

It is important to choose a physician answering service that understands the medical field and has extensive knowledge of what physicians actually do and need to be capable of. You should also check that they have extensive knowledge so you know for sure that your patients are getting the best after-hours care as possible. At CareXM we have several years of medical answering experience with professional operators that physicians and patients can trust. 

Finding Operators You Can Trust

Medical calls must be handled quickly and accurately with sensitivity to the patient calling. Physician answering services act as the face and voice of your practice when you aren’t around and should represent your value and goals in their services. Using CareXM you can rest assured that our operators place patient’s privacy at the top of their priorities and are experienced with providing quality answering services. We have secure messaging and are available for around the clock care for any time of emergency. 

Our professional operators can make on-call changes, location adjustments, and account modifications and much more. Choosing an answering service can be very difficult, but the decision should be made carefully so your patients know that they receive the best care and service when they contact your office. 

Set Up Your Medical Answering Service Today

If you have a question about CareXM and our services let us know, and contact us for more information about how we can help service as the voice of your medical practice.