Are current health care reforms finally changing the game for remote patient monitoring?

By: Robin Hill, Chief Clinical Officer, Vivify Health

A recent MedCity News article titled, “Can one new code spur a telehealth revolution?,” discussed the new CPT Code 99091 and how it enables providers to bill for time spent reviewing and analyzing data sent from patients through remote care technologies. Enterprises portfolio company Vivify Health specializes in remote care, so we checked in with Robin Hill, Chief Clinical Officer, for her take on the news.

New CPT Code a Step in the Right Direction for Utilizing Remote Monitoring to Bridge Patient Care and Engagement Gaps

First off, this is a positive endorsement for the clinical value of remote and virtual care technology. Second, it amounts to one big step toward understanding how this technology helps to increase patient engagement and improve outcomes.

Proactive, automated care will be keystones of health care’s future as patients will be able to utilize technology to monitor their health and report data wherever they may be in real time. It is heartening to see CMS realizing the value of remote care technology by issuing this new code to support the work done to process remote data. We encourage CMS to go further by approving remote patient monitoring (RPM) reimbursement for nurses working “incident to” providers, so that all clinicians working to keep patients healthy are thereby able to work top of license.

Another key benefit mentioned in the article is the ability of remote care technology to improve patient engagement. By utilizing easy-to-operate, familiar devices in the home – meeting the patients where they are – providers can significantly increase active engagement. With these patients comfortable inputting their data into these devices, providers will be constantly capturing and sharing information with care teams, allowing problems to be caught earlier. This will help to avert unplanned visits and costly readmissions.

From this standpoint alone, the time spent by providers and clinical teams managing remote data is extremely valuable, and the new CPT code 99091 is further evidence that data supplied remotely is just as clinically relevant and useful as data produced in an office visit or hospital admission.

 
Learn more about Vivify’s groundbreaking remote care platform at VivifyHealth.com.

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