Remote Patient Monitoring: 6 Must-Follow Tips for Choosing the Best Partner

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), is a digital health solution that captures and records patient physiologic data outside of a traditional health care environment. With benefits ranging from revenue growth in practice, readmission reduction, and patient engagement rate improvement, RPM has become an essential component of value-based strategies for healthcare providers in the recent years. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this adoption even further because RPM has benefited patients in reducing the amount of time they must spend in situations where COVID-19 virus could be transmitted. 

With an influx of new Remote Patient Monitoring solutions, it is important for healthcare leaders to choose the right partners who can drive successful outcomes. 

But, how can you find the right partner that maximizes your organizational outcomes? From the best devices to costs and fees to consider, this article summarizes 6 must-follow tips for healthcare providers to evaluate when choosing their next Remote Patient Monitoring partner.

Tip 1: Define Your Goals

Before implementing an RPM solution, the first crucial step is to keep an eye on your organizational goals, both clinically and financially.

a- What clinical goals do you want to accomplish for your RPM patients? 

It is important to choose an RPM partner that can help identify patients that are most likely to benefit from Remote Patient Monitoring. The right partner should help you identify the disease burden for your population and prioritize RPM solutions which will address barriers and provide needs for specific patient populations. Whether your goal is to increase patient engagement, improve medication adherence or identify the health risk status of your patients, the right RPM partner will develop a program that specifically supports clinical goals you defined for your organization.

b- What are the financial outcomes you want from the RPM Program?

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has been incrementally expanding coverage for remote patient monitoring since first recognizing the platform in 2019. Therefore, not only can the quality of patient care can be increased with Remote Patient Monitoring but also a new revenue stream is created for the providers through financial reimbursements received by CMS. Using a Remote Patient Monitoring Revenue Calculator can show how much revenue your practice could be generating.

Through a successful RPM Program, health systems providers can see cost savings in the form of reduced penalties by decreasing hospital readmissions and emergency department visits. If you are a primary care provider looking to decrease the healthcare costs of your chronically ill patients, RPM support the early intervention and chronic care management of your patients for decreased healthcare costs, advancing value-based care goals for higher savings. So, what are the financial goals of your organization?

Tip 2: Choose a Patient-Centered Technology

Finding a professional RPM company with easy-to-use devices is essential to the overall success of your investment. Choosing an RPM partner that provides a technology designed for patients with minimal technical knowledge will create increased patient engagement in your RPM programs.

RPM devices that use a cellular network are a more user-friendly option especially for the older patient population. Without the need for downloading an app, cellular RPM devices collect and transmit patient health information anywhere the provider network is available. This will result in less time required for onboarding and patient education as well as well as more patient satisfaction and overall engagement.

Tip 3: Consider Data Security

To launch a successful RPM program, data must be collected securely and properly integrated into an organization’s existing data management system. So when selecting a Remote Patient Monitoring provider, you should make a security risk assessment about its liability. For example, is the product HIPAA-compliant? Has the provider experienced any data breaches? If so, how do they take appropriate steps to prevent further incidents from occurring in the future?

Tip 4: Check EHR Accessibility

You should also check how remote patient monitoring devices and services would interact with your current Electronic Health Record. Not all RPM platforms integrate with EHR systems. While some providers fail to create seamless workflows, effective RPM service providers ensure that complete, automatic integration of health data flows into EHR. This allows healthcare providers to access a complete view of RPM logs while the patient profile is being reviewed during the exam. This point of care visibility avoids logging into different systems and charts while the provider is caring for the patient.

Tip 5: Ask About Technical Support

Before making the final decision, you need to ask if the Remote Patient Monitoring company can provide the level of service available both during and after implementation, including staff training, patient education and technical support, project management, data analysis and reporting, and communication. Ask specific questions to confirm the scope up front about service and support enable you to be comfortable with how the processes will be handled in the future.

Tip 6: Consider Optimal ROI

Calculating your expected return on investment (ROI) from an RPM Program, it is necessary to consider a variety of cost figures. These costs include the time you need to spend for training your employees, how much time your clinical team spends for following up on patients’ readings, time for the education and onboarding process for the patients, and the costs associated with technical support and RPM devices. Therefore, it’s important for healthcare providers to evaluate vendors that offer all these services from an off-site location that will not only take the workload off of the clinician teams but also help the clinicians save time and money associated with it.

Finally, you need to evaluate the costs and select the cost-effective plan which brings you the most ROI. When examining fees and other costs, two most important points to consider are:

Although cost should always be taken into consideration, it should not be the only deciding factor. Make comparisons between different pricing plans based on what they provide.

Conclusion

To sum up, your organization needs a secure, cost-effective and functional RPM solution. This program should be user-friendly and accessible for every patient who’s a part of your practice.

If you want to learn how RPM could benefit your organization or schedule a free consultation, we’d love to chat with you. Call (571) 489-7777 to discuss an RPM partnership tailored to your organizational needs.


(2022). Remote Patient Monitoring Playbook. American Medical Association (AMA).

Siwicki B., (March 8, 2022). How remote patient monitoring is moving into the mainstream. Healthcare IT News.

Wicklund E., (November 23, 2021). CMS Expands Medicare Coverage for Remote Patient Monitoring. Health Leaders Media.