5 Ways to Minimize Healthcare Costs with Telehealth & RPM

This guide will discuss in detail the five effective ways to minimize healthcare costs with telehealth and remote patient monitoring (RPM). However, before diving deeper into that, let’s first understand the basics; what is telehealth, RPM, and how they differ. So, without further ado, let’s get started:

What Is Telehealth?

It uses electronic technology to deliver healthcare digitally and has been around for a while. This approach is ideal when there is a distance between the patient and the provider. It gained significant traction during the pandemic outbreak when patients were urged not to visit the clinic often to limit the spread.

What Is Remote Patient Monitoring?

In order to collect and evaluate patient data outside of conventional medical offices, remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a healthcare delivery technique. RPM’s main objective is to move healthcare out of traditional office and clinic settings so that individuals can remain at home and go about their daily lives without going to the doctor or having regular checkups. These technologies create a link that boosts connectivity and healthcare quality for both patients and providers.

How is RPM different from Telehealth?

The main distinction between remote patient monitoring (RPM) and telehealth is that RPM solution uses technologies to communicate with patients remotely. In contrast, telehealth comprises the entire industry and the technologies required to deliver this kind of healthcare. Therefore, remote patient monitoring solutions can be considered a part of telehealth. All forms of technology used to gather data and exchange information for use by providers in providing care to patients are included in telehealth.

Additionally, RPM solution allows the patient to monitor their own health and make changes as needed without the assistance of a doctor. In contrast, telehealth is more often utilized to link the patient to a clinician for therapy.

How Can You Reduce Healthcare Costs with Telehealth and RPM?

Telehealth and remote patient monitoring have many operational and clinical benefits. Below we will discuss each one of these benefits in detail.

1. Prioritize the Care Continuum

By maximizing a healthcare professional’s time with their patients and enhancing communication, telehealth and RPM can help provide continuous care for newly discharged patients or patients with chronic illnesses.

By giving patients more control over their health, telehealth and remote patient monitoring can lessen the demand for unnecessary hospital visits and significantly lower the chance of repeat hospitalizations or readmissions brought on by deteriorating or undetected symptoms. Some characteristics that facilitate this include:

• Remote Biometric Surveillance
• Patient Education
• Online Visits
• Prescription Reminders
• Symptom Surveys

Moreover, telehealth helps save high cost of staff turnover that exacerbates revenue.

2. Lower Frequency of Readmissions

Hospital readmissions can be expensive for all facets of the healthcare system, from patients to providers. As a result, limiting readmissions is crucial for raising patient outcomes and treatment quality while also cutting costs.

Healthcare practitioners can lessen hospital readmissions using telehealth and remote patient monitoring solution in the following ways:

Patients who are at risk for readmission should be identified, monitored, and given virtual care options.

Improve patient understanding by effectively communicating post-discharge instructions and promoting patient education about their diseases.

Additionally, enhancing patient outcomes can increase Medicare reimbursement rates and hospital ratings, further strengthening the goodwill of your establishment.

3. Optimize Your Clinical Staff 

Your personnel must operate at their peak capacity to provide the best patient outcomes and care quality. However, staff fatigue and nursing shortages can negatively influence patient care, leading to prolonged hospital stays and expensive readmission.

By implementing care delivery models that use remote technologies, such as Hospital at Home, you may dramatically lessen the workload on your nurses and employees. Remote patient monitoring and telehealth solution can enhance patient outcomes and assist in lowering the overall cost of care for patients and providers by facilitating better patient monitoring, reducing in-person visits, and lowering admissions to the emergency department (ED).

4. Focus on Delivering Value-Based Care 

Value-based care is a proactive approach focusing on quality and patient outcomes to reduce healthcare costs (for payers and providers alike).

While there are still certain obstacles to implementing value-based care, a remote patient monitoring program can address most of them, enhancing your facility’s capacity to do so while reducing operating expenses over the long term.

The use of telehealth services and remote patient monitoring can help to further establish the model as a necessary component of your facility or as a stepping stone to start your journey to value-based care, as the need for value-based care is increasing.

5. Effectively Leverage Telehealth & RPM PM Reimbursements 

If you use the appropriate CMS-approved codes, remote patient monitoring can be a reliable source of income for your healthcare facility. Some remote patient monitoring (RPM) CPT codes are as under:

• CPT 99453 – Billed for Initial Setup.
• CPT 99454 – Used for the Supply of Devices.
• CPT 99457 – Charged for Remote Physiology Services for first 20-minute.
• CPT 99458 – Used for Remote Physiology Services for an Additional 20-minute.
• CPT 99091 – Billed for Data Collection and Interpretation by a Physician or Qualified Healthcare Professional for 30-minute.

While this may be advantageous for provider organizations, it can be challenging, especially at first, to accurately track your telehealth and remote patient monitoring services reimbursements.

To ensure that you can maintain the reimbursement process while also giving your patients higher-quality care, think about asking for the assistance of telehealth and remote patient monitoring reimbursement specialists.

Besides, several RPM companies offer an RPM ROI calculator, which lets you calculate how much reimbursement you can generate to meet your revenue goals using telehealth and RPM programs.

Conclusion

This guide discussed how telehealth and RPM could help you save healthcare costs. These include delivering value-based care, leveraging reimbursements, optimizing clinical staff, lowering hospitalization frequency, and prioritizing the care continuum. Thus, if you also want to minimize healthcare costs while increasing profitability, integrate telehealth and remote patient monitoring into your medical practice.