RPM for Cardiology

Assist your hypertensive and heart-failure patients in taking better care of themselves. The prevalence of cardiovascular disease is so high that it affects about half of the population.

Remote patient monitoring is an effective option that encourages your patients to take a more proactive role in managing their chronic cardiac diseases, which can be challenging to treat successfully. It has been shown that RPM can greatly lower the heart attack risk, strokes, and heart failure by lowering blood pressure and regulating cardiac risk factors.

We have prepared a comprehensive guide on remote cardiac monitoring to assist you in making a positive impact on the lives of patients who suffer from cardiovascular disease. This blog compiles a collection of concrete best practices for your team to use in your own remote cardiac care program.
Before moving forward, let’s understand what remote patient monitoring is.

What is the definition of Remote Patient Monitoring?

Vital indicators including body mass index (BMI), blood pressure (BP), oxygen saturation (SpO2), blood sugar (glucose) levels, heart rate, and cardiac rhythm may all be monitored and sent remotely, making up what is known as "remote patient monitoring." Telehealth includes remote patient monitoring. It's the practice of sending an individual's health records and data from one place to another using electronic means. To define it simply, remote patient monitoringis the process of collecting health data about a patient at a location other than a traditional hospital or clinic.Care may now be provided outside of a traditional healthcare facility and in the comfort of a patient's own home. With asynchronous remote patient monitoring, data is sent and held until a provider may evaluate it.

There are several advantages of using remote patient monitoring
By enabling the doctor to track the prog ression of their patients' symptoms over time, it paints a more complete picture of their health.

  • With access to more information, doctors can provide better preventative care.
  • Through remote monitoring, doctors can tell whether a patient's health has levelled out, worsened, or improved.

Providers can receive patient data in real time, at the precise moment a patient is suffering discomfort, disorientation, or an aggravation of symptoms, thanks to remote patient monitoring.

  • When doctors have access to all of their patients' medical records, they can offer more proactive, data-driven treatment that ultimately benefits their patients and streamlines their practice.
  • In light of the current nurse shortage, RPM helps physicians by allowing them to remotely monitor patients.
  • With the help of remote patient monitoring, patients may keep their doctors up-to-date on their health from the comfort of home.
  • When a patient is given the tools to take charge of their health, they are more likely to actively participate in decisions about their care, and their level of health literacy rises, all of which contribute to better health outcomes and a higher quality of life.

Numerous conditions and care settings now make use of remote patient monitoring, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure (CHF), diabetes, high blood pressure, primary care, post-surgical care, orthopaedic care, postpartum and maternity care, paediatrics, chronic kidney disease, hospice care, and palliative care. Because it allows for data-driven, preventative treatment to be provided, remote monitoring is a powerful tool for managing chronic conditions including diabetes, cardiac arrest, COPD, and hypertension.

The Process of Remote Patient Monitoring

Now that you know what RPM is, you may be curious in how it is really implemented.

The five-step process of remote patient monitoring:

The healthcare practitioner or group that treats patients makes the call to use RPM. Remote patient monitoring allows doctors to get information about their patients in a broad range of settings. Blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters, thermometers, glucose monitors, scales, electrocardiogram (ECG)/stethoscopes, fitness trackers, spirometers, and many more are all examples of common medical measuring equipment.

  1. The provider sets up in-home remote monitoring with the patient's permission (or pocket).
  2. Patients are given the tools they need to track their own health information and are given training on how to utilise the available equipment.
  3. Patients acquire health data by monitoring their vitals using the gadget at home, in the office, or while travelling. Patients may keep track of their vitals once a day, or more often if their situation warrants it and their doctor recommends it.
  4. The biometric equipment sends its readings in real time to the doctor, who can subsequently track any changes or patterns.
  5. Risk warnings are sent to the provider whenever a reading is outside of an acceptable range, allowing the provider to respond proactively.

Remote Patient Monitoring for Cardiology

System for Technical Support:

  • Is your RPM's deployment infrastructure complete and ready to go?
  • Do you, for instance, have a payment system in place that is compatible with the RPM technology you've purchased from a third party?
  • Will the new EHR and the care management software play well together?

Supporting your programme effectively requires a solid technological basis, much like a well-built house. Additional considerations that will form this technical basis are:

  • In this case, cardiac care is the kind of care that needs to be given.
  • What kind of clinical or patient information you want to gather.
  • Any necessary care and process enhancements.

You should look for an RPM supplier or service provider that can help you launch your programme using mostly the tools you currently have at your disposal. The RPM services provided by SISGAIN are among the best in the industry.

Integration of Data Methodology:

It's probable that you'll keep an eye on a variety of information metrics for patients, even if the RPM system was developed specifically to fulfil cardiac care provision.

  • Oxygenated blood
  • Pulse rate
  • Weight
  • Aspects of glucose metabolism and beyond

There are a variety of methods for facilities to gather RPM information. The common need, however, is that the systems meet HIPAA standards. For the most part, you should focus on infrastructure that allows for safe and wireless data transmission, with a cloud-based data integration system serving as your first choice. This allows information to be centralised and accessed with little effort, regardless of location or time.

Your chosen technology also has to be able to communicate with your current data management and invoicing systems using application programming interfaces (APIs) to facilitate smooth reimbursement procedures.

Types of Patients Treated:

Selecting the correct patients is crucial to the success of your heartcare remote patient monitoring services. As a result, patients are sometimes matched with the improper programmes, making this among the top three errors made by most implementers. Furthermore, most doctors don't bother explaining the technology's operation to their patients in the first place.

You should include patient demographic setup in your RPM checklist. Patients should be enrolled according to a set of criteria that help you target the right people.

  • standards for admittance
  • Conditions of rejection
  • Techniques for instructing Patients

Long-term illnesses, such as chronic heart disease, are one consideration; patients' connectedness and variable risk factors are two others.

To sum up, RPM projects are similar to puzzles. All the appropriate parts must fit together in rhythm, and the whole programme will collapse if even one of them is absent. All of the program's components, including the technical support system, patient and physician training, prioritisation of long-term care patients, and data backup systems, must work cohesively to assure the program's success. Your RPM vendor is also a crucial factor in the success of your project. SISGAIN is the best choice if you're looking for a dependable and knowledgeable partner in cardiac monitoring services.

Amina Sultan

Amina Sultan is the author of Wall Street Journal bestseller Everybody Writes: Your go to Guide to creating Ridiculously Good Content. She is the Chief Content Officer of SISGAIN; a Entrepreneur magazine; a Linkedin Influencer; a keynote speaker and technical writer.