Remote patient monitoring allows for successful telehealth interventions for patients with obesity lose weight. Telehealth interventions provide a safe, remote alternative and may expand treatment access to hard-to-reach populations.

Overweight & Obesity 

Approximately 75% of Americans 20 years or older are overweight or obese. Obesity is considered a chronic disease that increases a person’s risk for health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, and musculoskeletal problems. A person having a Body Mass Index (BMI) between 25 and 29.9 is within the overweight range, and BMI between 30 and 39.9 is within the obese range. 

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], (2022), the estimated annual medical costs of obesity in the U.S. was nearly $173 billion in 2019.  Studies also indicate that medical expenses for out-patient and in-patient services are higher for obesity compared to those within a healthy BMI range between 18.5 and 24.9. Losing just 5-7 percent of a person’s body weight produces significant health benefits in lowering blood pressure and preventing or delaying the onset of type 2 diabetes. So why are people still struggling to lose weight? 

 

Weight Loss 

The components of weight loss are multi-faceted, and research supports the best weight loss program focuses on helping others make sustainable lifestyle changes. Self-management support is essential for patients to extend health care outside of clinical walls and into their daily routines. 

Community Wellness, Technology (CWC) Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) program offers weight loss support using evidence-based FDA-approved blue-tooth devices and resources. A clinical team of physicians and clinical health coaches utilizes technology-supported daily monitoring and coaching to help adults lose weight and sustain weight loss by building healthier habits. 

Health coaches provide behavioral and self-management support to lose weight using virtual 1:1 coaching 20-30 min monthly coaching sessions. The integral component to helping a patient lose weight is the collaboration and trust between a patient and health coach. The daily weight readings within the CWC app also provide feedback for both the patient and coach in measuring progress towards reaching a patient’s weight-loss goal.  The app records weight, activity, SMART goals, and personalized check-ins and messaging. 

Technology combined with personalized health coaching provides science-based resources and tools for successful patient engagement and self-management. 

Benefits of RPM & Health Coaching Include:  

• Provides the latest information on weight loss
• Teaches disease-specific skills 
• Promotes behavior change 
• Builds confidence and motivation 
• Encourages and supports change
• Provides accountability  
• Tracks and records changes in weight and BMI 

 

Stronger Together On-Line Community Platform

Patients also learn skills around losing weight and building healthy routines using the Stronger Together (ST) online community platform.  Coaches share resources and information on healthy eating, exercise, managing stress, and other health-related topics. The Stronger Together platform is a space where patients can support each other experiencing similar weight-loss challenges.  Coaches are available to answer questions and provide tips on weight-loss strategies. 

 

Summary 

CWC partners with hospitals, primary care providers, and other healthcare organizations to assist patients in losing weight and improve health-related outcomes. RPM combined with 1:1 health coaching sessions helps patients lose weight and improve their overall health.  CWC offers personalized weight-loss support where patients can talk with their coaches in the privacy of their own homes telephonically or virtually. Patients feel supported throughout the weight-loss journey by the CWC clinical team and patient enrollment and support staff. 

 

Reference: CDC- Adult Obesity Facts https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html. May 26, 2022

Healthcare providers are, understandably, wary of new technologies since patients’ lives are – literally – in their hands. However, the benefits of remote patient monitoring outweigh the risks of early adoption. Bill Gates once stated, “There is an opportunity to speed up history at an inflection point.” He was referring to his creation of Microsoft, but those words have resonated with me during my healthcare career. Healthcare has many inflection points that are driven by new technology, public health policy, reimbursement, and expansion of services.

In late 2019, many healthcare providers suffered significant losses due to severe drops in volume caused by the proliferation of the Covid-19 virus and the resultant quarantines. These losses resulted in many hospital and healthcare providers closing operations permanently. Healthcare providers that had yet to deploy telehealth assets experienced the most severe losses. This was one of the most significant healthcare inflection points in recent history.

Telehealth inflection point

As governmental and commercial payers started to reimburse for telehealth visits, a new healthcare delivery model was created. Private equity firms and venture capitalists took advantage of this significant inflection point and created a multi-billion-dollar industry which has disrupted our local healthcare communities. Health insurance companies took advantage of this lower-cost alternative and contracted with Teladoc and other national companies to provide services directly to their customers. The reluctance of healthcare providers to embrace digital healthcare though early adoption allowed national telehealth providers to grab massive amounts of market share with a level permanency. The Covid-19 pandemic inflection point bolstered the public’s acceptance of digital healthcare delivery, broadening the digital healthcare market. History was sped up and digital healthcare became a permanent part of our delivery system.

Many health systems lost a significant long-term opportunity to laboratory start-ups that were willing to meet the massive amount of new demand. These laboratories were formed by entrepreneurs that saw the need for and capitalized on expanded laboratory services. Many of these entrepreneurs created generational wealth by taking advantage of the inflection point and sped up their own history.

Remote Patient Monitoring and Chronic Care Management

Between July 2003 and December 2007, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) introduced a national home telehealth program, Care Coordination/Home Telehealth (CCHT). Its purpose was to coordinate the care of veteran patients with chronic conditions and avoid their unnecessary admission to long-term institutional care. The table below shows the high-level results the program achieved by chronic condition.

The program achieved remarkable results and caught the attention of healthcare policy makers.  CMS began reimbursing for Chronic Care Management (CCM) and Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) in 2015 and 2019, respectively.  CMS further expanded coverage in 2022 to include Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM).  All these programs are delivered through telehealth assets to provide more care in the home. In addition to the telehealth visits, RPM and RTM provide FDA-approved devices for continuous and periodic monitoring of vital signs. These programs are designed to identify through health informatics changes in the patient’s well-being for earlier intervention. The trend in adding more access to care management at home is likely to increase in the future, based upon the ability to improve care quality and patient access, and lower the total cost of care.

Benefits of remote patient care

Healthcare systems, hospitals, and physicians are challenged today by staffing shortages, capacity issues, and declining reimbursement. The table below shows benefits of RPM to healthcare providers.

The case for early adoption

The current market penetration of RPM is less than one percent and is projected to be an 85-billion-dollar industry by 2026. This projected industry growth has caught the attention of healthcare stakeholders, pouring investment into healthcare-at-home initiatives. Pharmacy chains and payers are likely to quickly adopt these innovative programs and deliver through their current distribution channels.

Healthcare providers should strongly consider early adoption of an RPM solution and close this service gap sooner than later. If we have learned anything about the rise of Teladoc and the threat of the major pharmacy chains, we know the barbarians could already be at the gate.

Community Wellness

Community Wellness is a turnkey RPM platform that requires no capital investment, and supplies the equipment, care management staff, and the technology platform to provide a simple path to early adoption.

A 2018 survey of America’s physicians by the Physicians Foundation found that doctors are seeing an average of 20.2 patients per day, up from 19.5 in 2014. With a standard patient load, it can be difficult to give each patient the attention they deserve. This can be even more challenging when the patient is managing a chronic condition (or more than one). One way to help manage the care of these high-acuity patients is to adopt a Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) system.

5 things you should consider when evaluating RPM systems

Your patients’ goals

Are your patients asking how they can manage their condition(s) without multiple in-person doctor visits, especially in the time of Covid-19? Or perhaps they are trying to avoid costly hospitalizations. Also consider whether they are (relatively) tech-savvy and willing to embrace a technological solution.

=>  If the answer to these questions is yes, then RPM may be a good fit for your practice.

RPM costs and revenue opportunities

While RPM typically offers cost savings in the long run, there may be initial costs that need to be considered. The Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare found that equipment purchasing, servicing, and monitoring cost of RPM programs can range from $275 to $7963 annually per patient. These costs can vary depending upon whether you opt to purchase and manage an RPM system yourself or if you partner with a third-party provider. Some RPM providers may work with you to bill Medicare and pass any insurance savings onto your practice, resulting in additional passive revenue.

=>  Savings and revenue may increase down the line with a self-administered system, but you may need to bear the up-front costs associated with it. Partnering with an RPM provider may lessen downstream revenue but can eliminate start-up costs and negate the need for additional staff to manage the system.

Insurance/Medicare billing requirements

Many insurance companies and Medicare are beginning to reimburse for RPM expenses. Keep in mind, however, that there are specific requirements regarding the number of vital signs collected over a period of time and the type of device used to take the readings, as well as regular appointments with the patient.

=>  Does your practice have the capability to research and administer additional billing requirements for RPM? If not, consider partnering with an RPM provider who can manage the billing requirements.

Getting patient/staff buy-in

Whether you opt to institute a self-managed RPM solution or partner with a third-party provider, there are requirements that your staff and patients need to manage. Communication is key. Clearly delineate the process so that everyone is aware that, while it may seem burdensome at the outset, RPM can improve the lives of your patients and actually decrease patient management for your staff over time.

=>  Patients will need to have in-person appointments less frequently and can have the peace of mind knowing that any anomalies in their vital sign readings will be transmitted to their physician immediately.

Choosing an RPM provider

If you opt to partner with an RPM provider, rather than adopting a self-administered system, some factors to evaluate are:

• Do they have a medication adherence protocol for your patients?
• Do they provide patient coaching or simply have a technology offering?
• What is their protocol for transmitting readings outside of normal parameters?
• Do they offer a billing file and support documentation to make insurance/Medicare reimbursement simple or do they offer to manage billing on your clinic’s behalf?
• Is there a cost to partner with the provider or do they utilize a revenue share model?

A turnkey solution

Community Wellness is a full-service RPM provider that provides the devices to your patients and trains them how to track their vital signs, has a robust data analytics tool that seamlessly integrates with most EHRs, and offers a unique clinical coaching system for your patients that has shown to increase patient compliance with vitals measurement and medication adherence.

To learn more about our offering, which we call RPM+, email Traci Quillen, our VP of Healthcare Partnerships, for a demo.

Community Wellness Chief Medical Officer, Scott Parazynski, MD, and Chief Strategy Officer, Gene Preston, presented the challenges and value proposition of remote patient monitoring (RPM) to the Kentucky Hospital Association‘s HFMA annual conference.

KHA HFMA annual conference presentation on RPM

 

With the Delta variant causing a surge in COVID-19 admissions, hospitals are stretched to their limits. Nursing staff and bed availability are at all-time lows and seriously ill patients keep coming into maxed-out Emergency Departments.

The desire to care for patients is ingrained into every healthcare professional so how do they keep caring for patients when they don’t have the bandwidth? RPM can be the solution.

ICU bed shortages for COVID patients

States are reporting a record shortage of available intensive care beds. Some hospitals have been forced to transfer patients to other facilities, possibly hundreds of miles away from their friends and family. Others have had to turn ill patients away and hope that they don’t take a turn for the worse.

Nursing staff shortages

In addition to bed shortages, hospitals are facing historic nursing shortages. With the COVID-19 pandemic well into its second year, many nurses are experiencing burnout and opting to leave the profession. Long hours and the pain of watching patients succumb to the virus have taken a toll. The lack of qualified nurses puts additional strain, however, on hospitals. Even if they have the ICU beds to accommodate patients, they may not have adequate staff to care for them.

How RPM can help

As patients become seriously ill with COVID-19, their first thought is to head to the hospital, where the ED has to make some difficult decisions. If the patient isn’t critical, the staff may be reluctant to give them a valuable bed when someone more critical may follow. However, if they send the patient home and their condition deteriorates, the patient may not realize how severely ill they are until it’s too late.

This is where RPM comes in. Hospitals can send seriously ill – but not critical – patients home with RPM equipment and have them monitor their vital signs. A downward trend in readings can signal to the provider that the patient needs to head back to the ED immediately for admission. Frequent monitoring can alert the provider before a patient would realize their condition has declined.

CW can bridge the COVID care gap

The Community Wellness MyWellness Connect™ app is free for patients to download. Our team can walk them through every step of setting up the devices and tracking their vital signs.

Our Alert & Triage Algorithm kicks in when a reading outside of safe parameters is recorded. The Community Wellness Patient Success team will reach out to the patient and ask them to take another reading. If that reading is also concerning, the provider is notified immediately to review the vital signs and determine appropriate next steps for their patient.

In these unprecedented times, health systems and hospitals need to have every possible resource at their disposal. RPM has become more prevalent and patients are increasingly comfortable with telemedicine now. Let’s embrace the future today when we need it most.

Learn more about our COVID Home Management program.

 

Community Wellness remote patient monitoring plus (RPM+) goes beyond the technology of vital signs measurement. Patients participate in a vibrant, educational community and regular coaching sessions with a board-certified clinical coach. Through this program, the patient is actively engaged in improving their health and managing their chronic condition(s).

Our method pairs RPM data with certified clinical coaches to drive real improvements in health outcomes for patients. As a result, this approach to chronic disease management, which we call RPM+, improves patient satisfaction and engagement.

Positive RPM+ survey results

The results of our latest patient survey are in and show that our RPM+ program is effective.  We are very pleased with what our patients have to say:

Our coaches know that health is complicated. Therefore, we meet patients where they are and encourage achievable, small goals as the path forward to better health.

Community Wellness patients have good things to say

“Doing this program has made me more aware of what I can do to help myself. Really like my coach — she’s very helpful and easy to talk to.”

“After doing it for a week it has become routine. It’s one of the first things I do in the morning.”

“I find that making it part of my morning routine simplifies everything.”

Looking ahead

As remote patient monitoring and telehealth become more commonplace, Community Wellness is poised to rapidly scale our operations. From 18,000 patient interactions and 187,000 vital sign readings in April 2021, we anticipate 4 million+ interactions and 88 million+ readings by December 2022.

In conclusion, through patient education and increased participation in their own health management, our program has an immense impact on patient health markers and overall wellbeing. Above all, we take pride in knowing that RPM+ will improve longevity and quality of life for our patients.

Learn more about Community Wellness RPM+.