Remote patient monitoring at Ann Arbor-based Michigan Medicine has led to a $12 million return on investment from avoided hospitalizations, a new study found.
Hospitalizations fell by 59% among patients in a remote patient monitoring program in the six months following their participation, according to the March research in the journal Telemedicine and E-Health.
Most of the 1,700 patients in the study had congestive heart failure, uncontrolled hypertension or COVID-19. The patients were outfitted with devices to gather vitals at home and tablets to collect that data, with the information being sent to a medical team at Michigan Medicine.
“While remote patient monitoring has been expanding across the country for five years, there is no consistent guideline for how to operate such a program, including optimum patient selection, and decision-making for escalation,” said Ghazwan Toma, M.D., medical director of Michigan Medicine’s Patient Monitoring at Home program, in an April 15 news release. “Many home health agencies have added it to their home-based service offerings, and academic medical centers have created their own RPM programs, but the types of monitoring and patient interfaces vary widely. We hope our findings can inform best practices across the board.”
