Remote Physiologic Monitoring (RPM Services) : Add Remote Monitoring to your Services

Remote monitoring of physiologic parameters is the monitoring and analysis of a patient’s physiologic data that is related to an acute health illness or a chronic condition.

Examples of physiologic parameters are temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar, weight, vital signs, pacemaker information, etc.

Through remote physiologic monitoring technology a patient can have their vital signs monitored frequently and accurately and notify the care team if there are any abnormalities that need to be immediately addressed. 

Remote wireless monitoring is a new technology that allows the continuous recording of ward patients’ vital signs, supporting nurses by measuring vital signs frequently and accurately.

Remote patient monitoring is done once a patient has the devices that will be used to electronically submit data to a technology system. The technology system either has the ability to accept cloud, bluetooth enabled device information and/or through OCR. Once this information is read by the technology system a sophisticated technology system will have AI built into it to notify the care team of the abnormal readings and when there needs to be an intervention by the care team.  Otherwise, the care team will need to be monitoring the technology to wait for when there is an abnormal reading to know when to reach out to the patient and intervene to give additional support. 

Remote Patient Monitoring is paid for by government plans such as Medicare and the majority of Medicaid plans. Additionally, more and more commercial carriers are paying for this service including Medicare Advantage plans. Additionally, some self-insured insurance groups provide remote monitoring to their employees to keep their insurance costs down.

Remote patient monitoring is the shorthand name people use commonly call remote physiologic monitoring and/or remote therapeutic monitoring. Remote patient monitoring is a form of telehealth to allow providers to monitor, report and analyze the data for chronic conditions and acute conditions to increase access to care in a more timely manner and decrease healthcare costs.  A team of Remote Patient Monitoring nurses provide telehealth services by regularly reviewing monitoring data and contacts patients to assess health and progress toward health care goals.

Some chronic conditions that commonly benefit from RPM include hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, and obesity while acute conditions may consist of more fleeting or mild illnesses such as asthma, nausea, or the common cold.

Yes, remote patient monitoring is a component of telehealth. Other components of telehealth are telemedicine and chronic care management.

Remote patient monitoring is reducing the risk of hospital readmissions. According to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, RPM helped to reduce its readmission rate by 76%.

If you are a practice looking to provide remote patient monitoring services you would need to determine a platform that would be the best fit to use to collect the data from your patients, then organize who would be your care team to provide these services, put processes in place for this care team to follow including what needs to be discussed in gaining written or verbal consent to start remote patient monitoring with your patients. If you need help deciding which system to choose you can always seek out a consultancy like EHR & Practice Management Consultants, Inc. to help you choose the right system.

Nurses help comprise as part of the care teams when providing remote patient monitoring. RNs or higher are permitted to complete comprehensive care plans for the conditions being monitored which then need to be signed off by the provider before ongoing remote patient monitoring is continued in the months to come.  Also, RNS, LPNs and LVNs can provide ongoing remote patient monitoring. They would work with the software tool provided in order to be able to alerted to each of the patient’s readings from their devices and can contact the patient to discuss the readings, symptoms and offer additional educational information. Also, if needed can escalate the information provider caring for the patient if a revision of the care plan needs to be done and/ or further direction needs to be given by the provider overseeing the patient for the specific condition. This ongoing monitoring support given to the patient provides additional care and helps the patient try and stay on track and hopefully keeps them out of the ER and the hospital.

RPM costs vary by time spent per calendar month. RPM services cost on average $50 for the initial 20 minutes of service and an additional $40 for additional 20 minutes of service that can be billed up to triceps in a given calendar month.  Therefore, the minimal charge once the full scope of service and time intervals are met according to Medicare can range from $50 up to $130 for the maximum amount of time spent. The fees may vary slightly depending on the location of where the provider resides to care for the patient due to the physician fee schedule varies by location (states / locale).  Traditional Medicare pays 80% of the service whereas the secondary insurance plan or the patient is responsible for the remaining 20%.  Most Medicare Advantage plans pay for the service in entirety. If RPM is paid for by an employer then based on the plan with the employee the organization may pay for this service completely since it helps keep their patients happier and healthier at work.

In clinical trials of medical devices or drugs a patient may need to be monitored to track various physiologic or non physiologic items.  Remote monitoring makes it easy for clinical trials to capture this information through cloud based, bluetooth enabled or through OCR data capture to help the clinical trial gather the pertinent data needed for the clinical trial to proceed in a cost and time efficient manner.