Telehealth, remote monitoring and wearables are transforming care delivery
<p>The onset of the COVID-19 crisis a year ago, with its widespread quarantines and lockdowns, offered telemedicine its moment to shine after years of under-fulfilled promise. Now, as states look toward a post-pandemic world and rewrite many of the regulatory and reimbursement policies that often stymied wider adoption of virtual care strategies, it's time to build on that promise.</p>
<p>That's not just for telehealth and traditional video visits, of course, but also for remote patient monitoring, wearable sensors, devices, apps and the whole emerging and evolving ecosystem of connected health tools.</p>
<p>They all hold huge promise for long-term and post-acute care – promoting care coordination, enabling care plan adherence and boosting patient engagement for chronic care management and population health. As 5G proliferates and devices mature, that promise only grows.</p>
Published yesterday in PLoS ONE, the data suggests an alternative to the six-minute walk test often conducted in clinics to measure functional capacity.
Goodwill NYNJ used a $436,000 grant from the FCC to buy tablets, laptops and hotspots to enable caregivers to deliver care to low-income patients in the two states.
As CMS signals longer-term changes in acute RPM reimbursement and Amazon teams with major providers to push for new policies, clinical and IT leaders should start planning ahead, says one expert. "Everyone has to be thinking about this."
Its telehealth and remote patient monitoring efforts, expanded to help with COVID-19 treatment, are improving care and the patient experience – and helping compliance with a new CMS program.
Minutes after the full Senate confirmed Xavier Becerra's cabinet nomination, advocacy groups were reminding him of the need to bring the American healthcare system "into the 21st century."
Survey data shows patients, their families and friends are happy with the simple mobile app, which has boosted the Florida health system's OAS CAHPS scores.
Remote patient monitoring linked to the EHR helps researchers reveal important discoveries about the differences in recovery between women of both races.
The goals of its virtual care program include improving access to specialty expertise, enhancing the patient experience, reducing costs and enhancing clinical outcomes.
Although few people have sought help from a sleep specialist via telemedicine, the majority of respondents to a Philips global survey say they'd be willing to try it.
Providers will be able to have in-app live video conversations with chronic pain and movement disorder patients, as well as prescribe new settings for their neuromodulation therapies from afar.
The rural health system's care teams use remote patient monitoring and their self-developed COVID Action Plan to improve the treatment of patients with the coronavirus.
The result? A significant decrease in missed observations, an increase in compliance and audited observations, a decrease in risk incidents, an increase in staff engagement with clients and improved access to patient data by medical staff.
With Moving Health Home, Amazon Care, Ascension, Intermountain, Landmark Health and others say they want to "change the way policymakers think about the home as a site of clinical service."
With a collaborative spirit and a drive to provide the virtual care patients wanted, the health system has grown its program by leaps – it now sees in 10 minutes the number of patients it used to see via telemedicine in a month.
A new report finds that telehealth could play a vital role in helping health systems better support the needs of those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
"With so many families dealing with depression, higher suicide rates, domestic violence, death of loved ones from COVID-19, unemployment [and] food shortages, we are hoping we made an impact on their lives through telehealth."
The health system was conducting around 25 to 50 virtual visits a day; at the height of the pandemic, that rose to nearly 8,000. It worked with Cisco, Apple and others for clinician-to-clinician video.
The telehealth program has helped the provider organization preserve hospital capacity through multiple COVID-19 surges, while decreasing readmission rates and ED utilization.
The Louisiana health system performed more than 300,000 virtual visits in 2020 and earned a Net Promoter Score of 87.5 out of 100 – better than Amazon and Netflix.
Heritage Clinic, a behavioral health provider, gives tablets to help patients connect with their clinicians and with their families. The effort enables measurable improvements in mental health.
Now that CMS will pay for home hospital care, Brigham and Women's and other pioneering providers are pushing forward with this care in part to help with the crush of COVID-19 patients.
A Health Affairs study found that telemedicine use during the COVID-19 pandemic was lower in communities with higher rates of poverty – suggesting that the industry must address the digital divide in order to ensure widespread access to virtual care.