How to Choose a Patient Population for Remote Patient Monitoring

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is gaining substantial traction with healthcare providers nationwide, and for good reason. RPM lets healthcare professionals manage a wide range of patient conditions with enhanced clinical efficiency while providing patients better care at lower costs.

Although healthcare providers have historically used telehealth and RPM solutions to assist patients with chronic conditions or recovering from an acute care episode, its use has increased significantly across various patient populations due to its benefits.

Before implementing RPM into your practice, it's important to consider various factors, the primary consideration being which patient population you want to provide RPM services for. This will ensure that you make a worthwhile investment for the future and provide better care at lower costs.

Selecting a Patient Population for RPM Deployment

Healthcare organizations often start a RPM program for a specific condition (like CHF or COPD) and then scale their program to serve other patient populations. The initial launch is used as a trial run to see how RPM works while allowing the organization and staff to familiarize themselves with the platform and devices.

Step 1 is choosing a specific patient population as your primary RPM focus. Once your RPM program has proven successful with a specific patient population, you can expand its implementation to serve other patient groups at your healthcare facility.

As for selecting a patient population, it will depend on a number of factors, namely:

• What types of patient populations are commonly treated at your facility?
• What patient populations typically prove most costly to your organization?

• What is the digital literacy of these patient populations?
• How much training is needed to deploy RPM for a specific patient group?

What Patient Populations are Best Suited for RPM Programs?

Whether it's short-term or long-term care, many patient populations can benefit significantly from RPM solutions. Here are a few of them listed below:

1. Orthopedics

Telehealth brings post-surgical recovery or physical therapy rehabilitation directly into the patient's home by enabling virtual follow-up, virtual physical therapy, and orthopedic symptom monitoring. Surgical teams are able to interact with patients remotely via virtual multidisciplinary rounds.

2. Chronic Care Management 

RPM and telehealth allow providers to monitor their patients' symptoms and vitals in real time, track medication adherence, provide virtual visits, and educate patients about their condition.

With an RPM solution, the patient takes an active role in their own care, which leads to behavioral changes and improved outcomes over time. The independence promoted by RPM and telehealth improves the clinical staff's capacity to manage the program.

3. Cardiology & Cardiovascular Services 

RPM can assist patients with cardiac conditions via hypertension management, medication titration and management, and real-time symptom and vital signs monitoring. Additionally, you can utilize virtual care via a tablet or mobile app for routine care visits as well as triaging purposes when there is an exacerbation.

4. Cardiopulmonary Rehab 

Telehealth enables providers to provide multidisciplinary (PT, OT, RD) in-home virtual care while assessing the patient's biometrics, symptoms, and tolerance to exercise.

5. Prenatal & Postpartum 

Telehealth allows providers to remotely monitor the physical and emotional health of prenatal and postpartum women, particularly those at risk. Telehealth visits improve access while reducing patient burden. Symptom surveys and the PHQ9 assessment can also support and monitor the patient's emotional needs.

Furthermore, healthcare providers can use telehealth to monitor for postpartum hypertension, depression, and other conditions during the postpartum period, while the new parent stays home safely with their newborn.

6. Endocrinology 

Using RPM data, endocrinologists can make necessary changes to the patient's care plan that drive beneficial behavior change. Patients can also access a wealth of educational content from a tablet or smartphone with an easy-to-use interface to better understand their condition.

7. Oncology  

Cancer patients frequently have complex symptoms that necessitate close clinical supervision. RPM allows the provider to remotely monitor the patients' symptoms, improving satisfaction, and reducing symptom exacerbation and escalation. Furthermore, patients, clinicians, and family members can participate in a virtual visit to celebrate progress and stay connected despite physical distances.

8. Bariatrics 

Following bariatric surgery, RPM solutions and telehealth can assist a patient in adhering to dietary guidelines, medication, and an exercise regimen while providing educational tools on surgical recovery.

9. Pulmonology 

By providing tools for symptom management, vital sign monitoring, and patient-provider communication, RPM can aid in managing COPD, asthma, and other respiratory conditions. With telehealth and RPM, pulmonologists can help patients adhere to their asthma or COPD treatment plans, specifically their medications.

10. Behavioral Health 

With virtual care and symptom surveys, providers can track their patients' mental health and intervene if there is a noticeable decline. Patients can improve their health literacy and care plan compliance using the embedded PHQ9 survey, educational videos, and quizzes.

Must-Have RPM Features:

11. Diabetes 

With blood sugar tracking and access to virtual care, implementing RPM into diabetes care management can lead to improved adherence, better symptom management, and positive lifestyle and behavioral changes, all of which can lead to better results and the avoidance of diabetes-related complications.

Benchmarking the Effectiveness of Your RPM Solution 

Once you've started implementing RPM for your patient population of choice, it's critical to assess how effective it is for the patients who are receiving them. This informs you how well the program is going and what adjustments you need to make to ensure its continued success.

Among the quality metrics that can help with this include:

• Readmission rate
• Emergency department utilization
• Patient satisfaction
• Length of stay
• Patient medication compliance
• Patient adherence to vitals and surveys

By quantifying these metrics, you can determine the next steps for your RPM program based on the results.

Let HRS Help You On Your RPM and Telehealth Journey

Selecting a patient population on which to focus your RPM services is only the first step. A significant part of telehealth and RPM is having the right tools and systems that patients and providers are comfortable using.

From the monitoring devices and platform to installation and training, HRS is here to assist in effectively implementing RPM solutions, helping reduce admission, improve patient care, and save costs.

To learn more about the use cases for telehealth & RPM, download our Free infographic below 👇