As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic has made everyone rethink their habits, health, and lifestyle. The world has been witnessing many changes in the field of medicine and healthcare services. Also, the competition in the industry is drastic.

People expect to get the best care provided at a low cost and convenience. This is where RPM (Remote Patient Monitoring) comes into action. RPM is done by monitoring patients outside the traditional clinical settings. It can be done at one’s home or any private/remote place of their choice. This reduces the concerns regarding access to the services.

Benefits of using RPM

The need for providing advanced and better care for people is increasing tremendously. They are searching for easy access, good quality services without investing a huge amount of money and are looking forward to many services to be created to help them save their time and energy.

RPM enables healthcare providers to use various forms of telecommunications to reach out to their patients. They can even use basic communication tools like zoom, what’s app calls, snap chats, mobiles, landlines, etc., These lead to the benefits like,

• It helps the patients to interact with their providers at any time with ease.
• People can save more time by avoiding transportation.
• The providers can tend to each patient with utmost care and dedication.

The Healthcare industry as a whole has been recommending people to start using various types of technical amenities, to keep a check on their health and vitals, which turned out to be a more important need during the pandemic.

Some of such amenities are pulse oxy-meters, blood pressure, sugar level monitoring machines, etc.This early detection method reduces high-risk hospitalization at the very last moment.

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Awareness and accessibility

People all over the world during this pandemic became so aware of the importance of being healthy and tracking their vitals regularly. The lockdowns have increased the level of anxiety and stress among people of various categories. They couldn’t come out and seek professional help for those psychological problems. This leads to the main issue – accessibility.

The health care providers adopted Remote Patient Monitoring techniques to go door-to-door and reach their patients. They conducted many camps colliding with the Government in local areas, gave face-to-face as well as online counseling services for those in need.

Costs: Challenges and pros

The healthcare providers have been using RPM methods traditionally even before any advances happened in the field, to monitor their patients who were suffering from chronic diseases and to help them manage their conditions. Then it was the pandemic, which rapidly increased the need for post-acute care at home. RPM provided solutions that kept the chronologically-ill patients out of extreme life-threatening situations.

The main feature of RPM is that it uses digital technologies to keep a check on the patients by monitoring and recording medical data and other health-related issues, records, etc. then collecting them from the patients through electronic transmissions for the health care providers to assess them later.

This mainly improves the quality of care that the patients receive. People can check and record their vitals and psychological conditions on their own, at their convenience, without wasting their precious time and money. All they need is an internet connection and an electronic medium. This is where the main cost comes in. 

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Challenges:

• The usage of technical amenities is a cost-consuming method. Costs for all types of treatments and devices hiked during the start of the pandemic.
• Each item’s cost varied according to its availability and makers. Some created an artificial demand to increase the prices.
• It was a situation where people were expected to have good knowledge about the best cost-friendly products, which wasn’t practical.
• Sometimes the providers were not able to reach the people on time when there were emergencies.
• These were some of the disadvantages faced even while using RPM techniques. But joining hands with the health care providers, the Government too started engaging in helping people to tackle these kinds of situations.

Pros:

• During the pandemic, the Government started conducting camps in remote areas to reach the public easily at their convenience.
• These facilities reduced the fear people had.
• They issued many amenities to the public people for free of cost.
• They also provided expansion of reimbursement options for obtaining these technologies.
• These became a secure way to tend to the needs of patients with chronic diseases.

In an online survey, the federal government’s research found that this healthcare technology helps in decreasing the admission of patients and lowering the costs of chronic disease management. So the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) (US Department of Health and Human Services) expanded the RPM reimbursement.

Final Thoughts

The health experts and providers risked their own lives to save and serve people of all kinds and categories to fulfill their needs during this pandemic, by using all kinds of help they could get. There came many volunteers from nowhere to serve the nation. Many of these services were made possible by adopting RPM techniques and technologies.

Many companies worldwide are inventing and re-inventing smart watches and electronic gadgets by foreseeing the future of RPM in mind, to make the lives of the people better during difficulties. It is going to be very important for physicians, health care providers, and practitioners to adopt and use RPM techniques to survive through the competition in this present and the future world.

Health care portals or patient portals also help in attaining this goal. People are constantly searching for easier methods to reach for services these days and it will become more difficult in the future due to the increasing demands.

Everything’s available at ones’ doorstep these days. So it’s better to start using RPM methods in health care practices. By using these techniques, practitioners can attract and get hold of more people easily in a short time even for smaller services.

Schedule a quick demo with CapMinds to know more about RPM services.