The Collaborative Forum

It seems more and more often lately, I’ve been reading about remote patient monitoring (RPM) and how different segments of the healthcare industry are turning to these technologies as an effective and cost-efficient means of reducing hospital readmissions. The lead sentence of a recent WSJ article read: “Technology that aims to keep congestive heart failure patients out of the hospital is gaining traction.”

This is a good thing. We at Pharos have been using behavior change technology and RPM as a very effective tool for keeping heart failure patients healthier for the past 14 years. Providers and home care agencies have been embracing and using it for years.

The WSJ article cites some examples of payers who are turning to RPM, too. We are encouraged by the growth we are seeing in that segment of the healthcare market – growth that clearly indicates that these types of technologies are becoming more broadly valued and accepted as a critical element in cost containment and improved health outcomes. Read the rest of this entry →

I am sure you have seen the reports, including the 2009 article in the New England Journal of Medicine (Jenks, et al), that highlight the cost and prevalence of 30, 60 and 90 day hospital readmissions. I think it’s safe to say that we all agree that this is a major issue that our healthcare system needs to address.

Where we don’t all agree is how to get there. Organizations across the country are looking for effective initiatives and innovations to reduce these costs. In their quest, some organizations are looking for easy solutions, such as the simple scheduling of follow-up visits post discharge.  However, as detailed in a new study from the Mayo Clinic, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, siloed, quick-fix initiatives, while very important, alone will not provide the true behavior change needed for measurable reductions in avoidable hospital admissions and readmissions. Read the rest of this entry →

Another article caught my attention last week. It was an article in HealthLeaders  on a report issued as part of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, which covered 12 states including Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.

The key finding of the report was that the problem of readmissions and use of emergency room resources is more problematic than originally presumed.

According to the AHRQ report, “most readmission studies only report information on patients who have multiple hospital inpatient stays,” and in so doing exclude patients who seek care in the emergency department (ED). Once the researchers included ED visits, the rate of multiple visits jumped by more than one-third—from an average of 1.5 to 2.1 acute care hospital visits per patient. Read the rest of this entry →