How can remote patient monitoring impact diabetes?
For patients with type I or type II diabetes, remote patient monitoring (RPM) offers an easy and data driven solution. RPM uses everyday readings to keep clinicians informed and helps providers create adaptive management regimens for diabetic patients. By bridging the gap between scheduled doctor visits, RPM devices allow patients to track incremental changes in their blood sugar and allows providers to approach their diabetic patients with more informed and personalized treatment plans.
Choosing the best Remote Patient Monitoring offering can be a challenge for many physicians who are trying to scale their practices. A comprehensive Remote Patient Monitoring program should, above providing cellular devices to patients and an easy-to-use provider portal, include Population Health Management (PHM), white glove set-up, and AI assistance. These are important factors when it comes to choosing an RPM program and providing the best care for your patients.
The most effective RPM offering will employ PHM reminders to alert staff of patients that report measurements out of their safe range, ensuring that the most at-risk patients are always prioritized. To accurately manage your patient population, proper onboarding is crucial. RPM companies with White Glove set-up will conduct eligible patient outreach, education, and enrollment. For scheduling, coaching, daily reminders and everything in between, the most comprehensive RPM company will utilize an AI virtual medical assistant for a 24/7, hands-on, additional staff member solely dedicated to remote patients.
The best program will take care of your Remote Patient Monitoring start to finish so practitioners can focus on what matters most: the patient.
What is remote diabetes monitoring?
Remote diabetes monitoring enables type I and II diabetes patients to measure their glucose levels with at-home devices and ensures that their readings are quickly and safely transmitted to a provider portal. With access to their patients’ day to day readings, clinicians are able to track patient progress and identify patterns in order to prevent spikes and dips in patient blood sugar levels.
Diabetes patients are especially susceptible to minor changes between doctors visits which, without remote patient monitoring, can otherwise go unnoticed by healthcare providers. These minor shifts can present larger problems if left untreated, making daily data collection crucial for diabetic patients. With a clearer and more accurate depiction of patient progress between scheduled visits, providers can treat patients with more personalized and preventative care.
How can remote patient monitoring help type I and type II diabetes?
Diabetes is a chronic condition that requires everyday monitoring and personalized management and treatment plans. Prior to the popularization of remote patient monitoring devices, patients with diabetes could not record and report data during scheduled doctors visits with the same accuracy, speed, and ease. Furthermore, these one off measurements taken at doctors visits may not be an accurate reflection of the patient's overall wellbeing, or most common glucose levels. With a sporadic and ever changing condition such as diabetes, continuous monitoring with at-home devices is essential.
It has been proven that patients with diabetes that participated more frequently and regularly in remote monitoring programs had lower HbA1c (a measure of blood sugar in the body) levels at the end of their RPM program trials. When compared to the HbA1c of patients who measured their blood sugar only every two days, or even less often, patients who consistently measured their blood sugar an average of once per day were less likely to have high blood sugar levels. The more patients activated and engaged with their remote patient monitoring devices, the better their blood sugar control was.
Not only has greater patient engagement and activation been proven to lower blood sugar, but increased patient RPM education has also shown significant reductions in HbA1c levels. A study on remote patient monitoring and diabetes education showed that patients improved their control over their diabetes through the use of remote monitoring devices and education provided via a diabetes self-management program. Diabetes self-management education, or DSME, is recommended to all patients upon diagnosis, however only 5-6% of patients receive DSME. This education has been proven to lower hospital readmissions, reduce A1C, and is cost effective for patients.
By combining DSME with remote glucose monitoring, patients were able to achieve greater glycemic control, increase their knowledge of diabetes, and improve self-care methods. This study also revealed that physician engagement with patients during DSME was incredibly beneficial, including long-term and continuous follow up from providers. Therefore, physician and patient engagement in patient education as well as in remote patient monitoring is crucial in the management and treatment of remote diabetic patients.
What happens if a patient reports dangerous glucose levels?
Remote patient monitoring allows providers to go beyond assessing and monitoring patient data in order to identify patterns in patient data and intervene in cases of high or low blood sugar readings. These patterns in patient data can lead to early detection while intervention can catch issues before they evolve into emergencies. If a patient’s device reports a blood sugar level outside of the safe zone, an urgent alert will be sent to the clinician. For providers, this information is known as Population Health Management and it is used to recognize patients that are reporting data outside of a safe range and notify clinicians of their status. This process enables clinicians to receive, review, and treat their high priority and at-risk patients in a quick and efficient manner.
Patients who report readings outside of their safe range will be attended to by staff members who are immediately notified of the patient's current condition. Population Health Management, or PHM, alerts are categorized as low, medium, and high, and are used to alert providers of the status and priority of their patients. Medicare requires that clinicians receive such notifications and remain informed by their remote patient monitoring system so that they can continue to be reimbursed by the program. Remote patient monitoring companies make population health management and Medicare reimbursement easy, keeping patients safe and clinicians reimbursed through the program. RPM gives patients the ability to measure their blood glucose from the comfort of their home while ensuring that they are cared for with the most personalized management and treatment plans their clinicians can provide.
