Six in 10 adults in the U.S. have two or more chronic conditions, a number projected to increase every year. That’s why the status quo of treating patients via episodic in-person visits needs to be supported with real-time monitoring, says Optimize Health CEO Todd Haedrich. RPM allows clinicians to expand patient care when patients tend to need the most support – outside the four walls of the practice and during their daily lives.

The Optimize platform delivers the real-time data needed for clinicians to deliver the right care at the right time, says Haedrich. Here are 5 insights courtesy of athenahealth Marketplace partner Optimize Health.

What remote patient monitoring (RPM) is, simplified

With real-time data at their fingertips, clinicians are enabled to proactively intervene if a patient trends in the wrong direction. They can also make data-driven decisions, and adjust a patient’s care plan when necessary.

Remote patient monitoring connects clinicians to their patients outside of office visits and allows providers to deliver continuous care for conditions like hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, obesity, and more. Patients use FDA-approved devices to securely send their readings to their providers and care team members who can then monitor and track in real-time how their patients are doing every day.

Who RPM is suited for

From our own clients, we hear how much patients and their families are comforted by the idea of being monitored daily, rather than every other month. One of our nephrology clients told us about a patient they enrolled into RPM, and how she was so relieved that she was being cared for each day that she finally felt comfortable enough to get on a plane to visit her daughter.

The pandemic’s effect on accelerating virtual care and RPM

Remote care and in-person care are complements to each other, and Optimize sees RPM as a way to facilitate better outcomes at scale. A recent McKinsey study found that over the last two years, Optimize has seen a 38-time increase in remote care utilization that continues to grow each day, and that 75 percent of patients want more remote care options than they currently have.

With RPM, clinicians are able to easily prioritize patients based on need by supporting those who with chronic but manageable conditions remotely, and prioritize the patients who have more acute conditions or need to be seen in-office.

How Optimize Health differs from other solutions

The Optimize Health platform facilitates key clinical workflows to accelerate proactive and preventative care across entire patient populations, and also delivers in-platform communication tools to deliver patient engagement and outreach. Our platform automatically tracks when each Current Procedural Terminology (CPT code) requirement is met, helping clients achieve greater practice revenue while staying compliant.

In addition, Optimize easily integrates with both cellular and Bluetooth devices, delivering a high level of flexibility and choice across devices and patient preferences. The platform also operates on an open application programming interface (API), making it easy to add/remove devices to reflect patient care plans or evolving needs. Optimize Health offers multiple devices, including blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters, blood glucose monitors, and weight scales across both connection types. That technology complements a suite of managed services for our clients, including clinical monitoring, RPM eligibility verification, and patient onboarding services to help our clients successfully build and scale their RPM programs.

The clinical possibilities of RPM

RPM has delivered tremendous outcomes for patients across conditions across the U.S., reducing hospitalization stays by nearly a week and significantly reduced AC1 levels for diabetic patients. The Department of Veterans Affairs has been successfully using RPM to monitor patients, helping to stabilize their hospitalization rates to 4 percent during the peak of the pandemic.

From Optimize data, patients monitored through our platform achieve better results, faster. For instance, our diabetic patients monitored through our platform have achieved a 2.4 A1C drop within four months (with average AC1 of 11% at start).

What advice do you have for practices that are interested in providing RPM services, but have staff constraints?

There are a number of ways to extend the value of real-time monitoring to patients without adding overhead costs. The Optimize Health Managed RPM program allows our clinical staff to monitor and serve as an extension of your care team. We’ve had tremendous success partnering with our clients to establish tailored treatment plans and escalation processes, and these clients have benefited from clinical staff who provide dedicated patient support and outreach.

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Please note that as a member of the Marketplace Program, Optimize Health and athenahealth are parties to a financial arrangement.