Reimbursements and EHR integrations are high priorities for RPM, says KLAS report

Reimbursements and EHR integrations are high priorities for RPM, says KLAS report Andrea Fox

To better evaluate rapidly evolving remote patient monitoring technologies, KLAS researchers explored customer experience with RPM in several key areas, including partnership, innovation, ease of use and integration with electronic health records.

WHY IT MATTERS

RPM has demonstrated earlier intervention and reduced utilization – particularly critical outcomes for value-based care arrangements – but healthcare organizations that are piloting the technology are looking at reimbursements, integrations with EHRs and monitoring devices and staffing needs, according to the new Remote Patient Monitoring 2023 report from the KLAS Arch Collaborative.

For the study, researchers conducted interviews over the last 12 months with multiple organizations for a quantitative evaluation rating RPM products from 10 companies. More than 165 individuals from all sizes of organizations responded.

Optimize Health, Health Recovery Solutions and TimeDoc Health had the highest rating for ease of use while HRS achieved top ratings for technology integrations.

The researchers noted that users of HRS – the 2023 Best in KLAS winner – are often large organizations with enterprise-wide programs that cover multiple conditions and care settings.

The majority of Optimize Health and TimeDoc Health users are clinics, according to the researchers.

During COVID-19, RPM helped them collect data from chronic patients remotely, according to an interview last year with Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq, chairman, CEO and founder of Biotricity, a medical diagnostic and healthcare technology company.

Meanwhile, "Some feel [EHR] integration is a strength, though several customers would like deeper or more automatic integration of patient data into the [EHR]," KLAS researchers said in the new report.

An overall performance scores chart shows that most users are using their RPM platforms to monitor heart disease and hypertension and using the technologies for care management and patient-facing technical support.

Most organizations are also using RPM platforms for device inventory and management.

"Feedback regarding integration and reporting is varied — several customers say [EHR] integration isn’t available or isn’t as deep as they would like it to be," the researchers said.

Things HRS users "would like to see include continuous monitoring, better inventory management an improved video visit tool and an updated [user experience] for tablets," the researchers noted.

Both Biofourmis and Current Health offer continuous monitoring.

Although the response was limited on Biofourmis, the vendor's customers view the company as "innovative and a strong partner," but their feedback was mixed on integration and ease of use.

For Current Health – part of retailer Best Buy – responding customers reported that the RPM platform is part of their long-term plans. The company's large organization customers "describe the vendor as collaborative, responsive and eager to create enhancements," KLAS researchers said.

CareSignal, which offers deviceless RPM and requires patients to provide updates on their condition via calls or text, was excluded from most charts in the report. A mix of clinics and larger healthcare organizations looking to minimize technology concerns for patients said they most commonly use the solution to monitor diabetes and reported being highly satisfied. However, CareSignal cannot be reimbursed using RPM CPT codes.

KLAS also evaluated customers of MD Revolution, VitalTech, CareSimple and Livongo, which is mostly used by payers and employers.

For MD Revolution, some customers reported struggling with their account managers while VitalTech users said unreliable support and a lack of advanced features had them rethinking their long-term plans, according to KLAS.

THE LARGER TREND

The use of RPM is increasing as healthcare organizations struggle with staffing shortages and increased patient loads.

"This digital health tool and secondary care team lessens the pain of staffing shortages to care for current patients and increases the bandwidth of existing resources who then hold the capacity for adding new patients," explained Andrew Zengilowski, CEO and co-founder of CoachCare, an RPM vendor.

He told Healthcare IT News in March that the specialty care providers his company is working with are getting ahead of staffing issues and improving outcomes without adding additional staff.

Hospitals are also using RPM to get ahead. Fort Myers, Florida-based Lee Health is sending fewer people to hospitals and emergency rooms with an Epic-linked RPM, according to an interview in January.

"Our digital footprint all of a sudden expanded from more of a passive monitoring program to monitoring plus intervention," said Dr. Zsolt Kulcsar, Lee Health's medical director.

ON THE RECORD

"The options for RPM are rapidly evolving, with many factors for healthcare organizations to consider," said KLAS researchers.

"Reimbursement is an ongoing question, with some healthcare organizations feeling they can’t rely solely on reimbursement from CPT codes."

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.