Remote Patient Monitoring

The Real Benefits of Remote Patient Monitoring Services

07.03.2016Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it is highly unlikely that you have not heard about Remote Patient Monitoring. In this era of telemedicine and remote healthcare dissemination, Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) occupies a position of supreme importance. While the advent of telemedicine has helped bridge the divide between patients residing in remote areas on one hand and quality healthcare on the other to a great extent, RPM emerges as a logical extension of this benefit. The real benefits of RPM, however, extend far beyond the obvious. Let’s take a closer look.

The biggest benefit that Remote Patient Monitoring brings is in its cost saving. It’s a well-known fact that hospital admissions are often a costly affair. With re-admissions, the cost multiplies. It also results in new patients being denied of hospital services. Remote Patient Monitoring works wonders in curbing this menace by preventing false alarms and situations that earlier would have resulted in re-admission.

The system essentially allows maintaining a vital link between the patient and the physician. When certain vital signs of the former need to be monitored by a physician on a consistent basis, and yet practical hurdles prevent such execution, RPM acts as the perfect solution. It helps in instantly notifying the concerned physician whenever a patient’s vital signs hover into the danger zone. This, in turn, allows for timely intervention and in many cases, avoiding a hasty hospital re-admission.

Remote Patient Monitoring services also result in shorter stays in the hospital. In pre-RPM days, patients would often be kept confined to their hospital beds for days after treatment, just for observing their state of health. Now, they are discharged sooner than ever. They are, however, still being monitored for any sudden signs of deterioration using RPM.

In the final analysis, Remote Patient Monitoring is a major step in cutting unnecessary healthcare expenses while improving the overall quality of healthcare. With ongoing development and improvement, it will emerge as an even more significant aspect in health care in the coming days.