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Cardeum partners with leading ehealth and telemedicine providers to offer a unique remote patient monitoring service across a wide variety of businesses and organizations: integrated health systems, hospitals, home health agencies, accountable care organizations, disease management organizations, insurance companies, managed care organizations, Medicare Advantage programs, State Medicaid programs, self-insured businesses, companies with corporate wellness programs, risk-prone industries, and more.

Our scalable ehealth monitoring service delivers timely, actionable data from patients’ homes, improving access and outcomes, while decreasing costs, while our highly-trained clinicians customize the work flow and program objectives to meet the needs of your organization and your patients to produce desired outcomes and a more satisfactory patient experience.

What is Remote Patient Monitoring?

Remote patient monitoring uses digital technologies combined with care managers to monitor and collect medical and health data from patients for the purpose of improving health outcomes.

Care managers can collect a wide range of health data from patients enrolled on monitoring programs, including vital signs, heart rate, blood pressure, weight, blood sugar, blood oxygen levels, and even electrocardiograms.

A care manager who is providing remote patient monitoring can proactively identify emerging issues before they become full-blown problems and provide immediate interventions – leading to improved outcome measures, reduced hospitalizations, and reduced E.D. visits.

Applications for Telehealth Monitoring

Where remote patient monitoring is most valuable is for patients with one or more chronic conditions, such as congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. In addition to monitoring biometric readings for these patients and intervening when necessary, care managers can:

• Evaluate patients’ medication compliance, including whether a patient has filled a prescription on time or is taking a drug as prescribed.
• Help patients identify the link between the onset of symptoms and a newly prescribed drug.
• Provide education to help patients understand their co-morbidities and how best to manage their conditions.
• Coach patients to better manage their overall health.
• Assist clinicians with monitoring a patient’s treatment plan.
• Help patients get the most from their home health visits.

To illustrate the impact a remote patient monitoring can have on a patient’s outcome, consider a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; by checking in to see if he is using his maintenance medications every day, the remote care manager can prevent problems that could eventually lead to a hospitalization. Consider the congestive heart failure patient; a recorded spike in the patient’s weight could transmit an early warning to the remote care manager that patient’s heart might soon have trouble pumping enough blood through her body. Finally, consider the diabetic patient with crashing blood sugar who would usually wind up in the ED; as the home caregiver records the blood sugar data, it could generate an alert for the remote care manager, who then calls the home and suggests the patient drink some orange juice to bring the patient’s blood sugar back to normal range.

With these types of patient benefits – coupled with real improvements in healthcare outcomes – no wonder why remote patient monitoring and telehealth have already been embraced by hospital providers across the country. In fact, recent studies estimate that as many as 50% of hospitals use telehealth in some capacity, with another 10% considering a telehealth launch in the near future. What’s more, in another survey, 89% of healthcare executives responded that telemedicine will transform the U.S. healthcare system in the near future. Undoubtedly, home health will not be immune to such a transformation.

And for good reason. With recent technological advances in telehealth, it has now become commonplace for remote patient monitoring technology to be able to record a patient’s vital signs, activities of daily living, dietary habits, medications compliance, and more, with this information easily accessed by and shared with the entire care team – including home health staff, physicians, and family members. Built-in algorithms can trigger alerts and notifications, resulting in rapid interventions, significantly improved communications, better patient care, better results, better outcomes – and happier patients.

Related Studies

In a 2013 study, 99 older patients with heart failure were admitted to home healthcare following a hospitalization. They were followed up to 180 days post-discharge; results showed that patients in the remote patient monitoring group had better health status by home healthcare discharge than those who received usual care

That’s not the only study that has demonstrated the efficacy remote patient monitoring. In 2014, a six-month study was published in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare that showed significantly lower hospitalizations, fewer ED visits, and fewer primary care visits for Acute Exacerbation of COPD (AECOPD) patients who were given a mobile phone to record major symptoms. The results showed “the potential of home monitoring for [analyzing] respiratory symptoms for early intervention AECOPD.”

About Cardeum

Cardeum partners with leading ehealth and telemedicine providers to offer a unique remote patient monitoring service across a wide variety of businesses and organizations: hospitals, home health companies, insurance companies, large businesses with corporate wellness programs, ACOs, disease management organizations, risk-prone industries, and more.

Our scalable remote patient monitoring service delivers timely, actionable data from patients’ homes, improving access and outcomes, while decreasing costs. Our highly-trained clinicians customize the work flow and program objectives to meet the needs of your organization and your patients to produce desired outcomes and a more satisfactory patient experience. Contact us today if you have questions, want to get started, or just want to explore the benefits of telehealth services for your business or organization.

Our remote patient monitoring solution has dramatically reduced hospitalizations for our clients, including:

• 47% reduction for patients with CHF as a primary diagnosis
• 51% reduction for patients with COPD as a primary diagnosis
• 56% reduction for patients with Diabetes as a primary diagnosis
• 63% reduction for patients with Hypertension as a primary diagnosis

In a six-month CHF study, we achieved a six-month hospitalization reduction of 50% and a 30-day hospitalization reduction of 73%.

Benefits Achieved with Cardeum

• Reducing readmissions for severe disease categories that can be monitored and stabilized at home
• Reduced emergency care visits
• Improved timely and accurate patient information
• Improved patient outcomes
• Improving education and self-care
• Increasing efficiency and revenue

Interested? Contact us to get started or if you just want to explore the benefits of Cardeum for your business or organization.

Additional Resources

• HIMSS: Driving Care Coordination Savings
• Medical Economics: How Mobile Devices will Curb Chronic Conditions
• The Wall Street Journal: Doctors Spot Trouble Early