Today’s health leaders are harnessing the power of remote monitoring to provide better care. When a patient leaves the clinic or hospital, their care doesn’t always stop at discharge. Remote healthcare can help patients reach goals for recovery, lower the chances of readmission, and provide critical data to healthcare providers.
But for remote monitoring to work well, healthcare leaders need a plan to establish responsibilities and goals. Read on as we unpack the way health leaders can operationalize remote monitoring.
Understand the Role of Remote Monitoring
While it might seem easier to assume that remote monitoring is a standalone service, providers must see it as one part of a bigger effort. Remote monitoring shouldn’t be isolated from a patient’s journey. Instead, it should connect with in-person appointments.
When considering how to approach remote marketing, leaders should determine which patients to target and how to assign start and end times to monitoring. There should be a consistent schedule for reviewing data to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.
Perhaps equipment is used to monitor a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, or blood glucose levels between visits. A well-executed remote monitoring system would conduct data readings at set times each day. If something spiked, a provider would see the change and intervene.
Select an Appropriate Model
Healthcare leaders can choose between in-house remote monitoring systems or vendor-produced options. Both bring different benefits, but the size and financial standing of the healthcare system will impact the decision.
Internal systems are best for established, large health systems that have the IT resources to build and maintain the remote monitoring systems. Healthcare systems will need to provide staff training and provide continuous quality oversight. And they’ll need to be prepared to pay more upfront.
With a partner model, health systems can let the vendor tackle some of the key tasks, like onboarding or monitoring assistance. In some scenarios, it can make sense to let internal providers manage patient care as vendor teams take on logistical tasks.
Looking at remote therapeutic monitoring software, healthcare teams will want to consider patient outcomes, operational performance, and costs per patient. The best software can help providers develop more efficient workflows and enhance patient care through a scalable approach.
Turn to Workflow Automation
To make remote monitoring work, health leaders have to embrace automation. Manual workflows chew up time and overwhelm staff. Automation streamlines processes and helps build more concrete benchmarks for patient interventions.
With automation, health systems can scale without experiencing as many bumps in the road. They can use automation to help enroll patients in remote monitoring programs. They can also use automation to schedule additional appointments and document details.
Automation can assign risk levels to patients and flag missed readings, as well. In short, automation can help providers prioritize patients and intervene when data shows the need. For low-risk patients, for instance, providers may only need to review data weekly and receive automated reminders about patient data.
Moderate-level patients could require reviewing data more often. Providers may need to receive alerts for slight shifts in patient data.
With high-risk patients, providers may be checking data every day. Nurses or other providers may need to conduct check-in phone calls or virtual visits. And if problems escalate, there must be a protocol in place for providers to respond quickly.
Focus on Provider Training
While tech tools can help with operational efficiency, remote monitoring can’t be a success with technology alone. Providers overseeing patients must understand their role. They should be able to see a clear workflow, including expectations for everything from documentation to escalation.
Providers should understand what to do if a patient needs help troubleshooting a device or needs help with billing. And they should know when to communicate with patients, plus strategies for doing so effectively.
Leadership teams should also have plans in place to address workflow adjustments. Reviewing KPIs may indicate the need for changes to how clinicians enroll patients or respond to alerts. Maybe healthcare systems are seeing high readmission rates or low medication adherence, triggering the need for a change.
Patient experience feedback or labor efficiency challenges are other reasons teams may need to adjust how they do remote monitoring. Ultimately, healthcare systems that invest in training and ongoing review will have the most success.
Create a Permanent Plan
Remote monitoring can help healthcare organizations improve patient care. But healthcare leaders must consider how to make the most of automation and invest in staff training to roll out remote monitoring the right way. Leaders should select a model that meets their needs and review KPIs regularly.
With an approach that values ongoing improvements, health leaders can serve their patients, lower staff loads, and position their health systems for growth.
