Remote Patient Monitoring for Diabetes Management
The prevalence and costs of cardiometabolic conditions is the healthcare problem of our generation.
One of the most common cardiometabolic conditions today is diabetes, with approximately 1 in 10 Americans currently living with the disease, at the cost of $327 billion per year. Reports also estimate that the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and diseases will continue to rise, with diabetes seeing the largest percentage increase.
Adding to these statistics, many patients with diabetes do not meet the goals of the ABCs of Diabetes Care - A1C, Blood Pressure, and Cholesterol, due to factors such as lack of education about their condition, lack of ability to access resources and affordability of care. Patients with uncontrolled diabetes are at higher risk for comorbid conditions, such as heart disease and stroke.
As the number of patients with diabetes continues to rise, both patients and providers need a way to effectively and efficiently manage the condition.
The Rx for Managing Chronic Conditions: Remote Patient Monitoring
Remote patient monitoring has had a track record for helping manage chronic conditions, particularly for diabetes, hypertension and COPD. After all, a patient lives with their chronic conditions 24/7 - not just the hour that they are at the doctor’s office. Patients feel supported knowing that their doctor can see their blood-glucose or blood pressure readings and can intervene if they see anything concerning. In fact, a survey of over 250 remotely monitored patients with chronic disease, conducted by Rimidi and Desert Oasis Healthcare, found that 70% of respondents believed RPM enabled them to better manage their health conditions.
Additionally, studies have shown that the use of remote patient monitoring increased significantly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and these programs have helped improve patient outcomes, resulted in fewer emergency department visits, and improved patient satisfaction.
Because increased popularity during the pandemic has shown improved outcomes, experts expect RPM adoption to continue to accelerate rapidly over the next five years.
Choosing the Right Remote Patient Monitoring Solution
When considering a Remote Patient Monitoring solution, it’s important to remember that the goal of Remote Patient Monitoring isn’t just monitoring and data aggregation, it’s management of the patient’s condition. To do this effectively, RPM data needs to be merged with other patient data, and analyzed and interpreted in a way that is meaningful to clinicians within their existing clinical workflow.
Rimidi’s FHIR-enabled platform combines patient-generated health data from connected devices and patient reported outcomes measures with clinical data in the EHR- including lab results, diagnoses and current medications–to drive patient-specific clinical insights and actions through embedded clinical decision support cards.
Our goal is to achieve the quadruple aim of better patient outcomes, lower costs, and improved patient experience by adding the crucial aspect of improved provider satisfaction. We have found the most important aspect of provider satisfaction is ensuring that our solution works within their existing EHR workflow. Here’s what this looks like in action.
Success Story: Managing Type 2 Diabetes with Remote Patient Monitoring
Our customer, Leon Medical Centers, a leading healthcare services provider serving Medicare patients in South Florida, was looking for a remote patient monitoring solution that could help high-risk patients manage their diabetes. Understanding that chronic conditions require continuous care, they wanted to ensure the program would work within their existing clinical workflow and align with their mission of providing personalized patient care. They turned to our remote patient monitoring solution.
As a pre-approved SMART-on-FHIR platform available within Epic’s App Market, integration to Leon’s Epic EHR required minimal effort from Leon’s IT team and enabled the Rimidi platform to launch as an iframe within Epic. Working with our clinical optimization team, Leon Medical Centers decided that they wanted to begin their RPM program with their highest-risk patient cohort: patients with a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes and a Hemoglobin A1C of over 9%. Once integrated with Epic, Rimidi was able to pull the patients that met these parameters–approximately 250–into a patient registry view within the Rimidi platform.
The patients were then given a cellular-enabled glucometer and instructed by their provider how often to check their blood-glucose level at home. Data from the glucometers is transmitted to Rimidi, where it can be viewed alongside other relevant data from the EHR - such as appointments, screenings, and medications.
Rimidi then provides configurable clinical decision support cards and alerts based on the data in the platform, prompting clinicians to take action when a patient’s reading is out-of-range or when they have not taken a reading within a certain timeframe.
We were pleased to share some early results of the program from Leon last year. Of those patients, 84% have dropped their A1c levels below 9%, a key indicator of better diabetes control. Additionally, the average number of blood glucose readings per assigned device per month is 28, which indicates high levels of patient engagement.
To learn more about how Rimidi can help your health centers improve diabetes management for patients with diabetes, contact a member of our team today.
