A noticeable trend in telehealth has to do with focusing less on the generic virtues of at-home vital signs monitoring for routine patient care and more on managing specific high-cost populations to avoid or reduce costs. Some of the impetus in the US has come from new regulations by CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) intended to move Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients into a reimbursed chronic care management (CCM) model. Banner Health is Arizona’s largest private employer (which does say something about Arizona as a retirement haven) and since 2006 has been experimenting with remote monitoring since 2006. Starting... Continue Reading
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The potential of engaging ‘safety net’ patients via mHealth: study (US)
The Commonwealth Fund‘s just-published study on mHealth usage in a national sample of urban and rural community health centers and clinics (in US termed ‘safety net providers’ for low-income and uninsured) indicates the potential of mobile health for patient engagement in care, but yet to be achieved. Their patient population has high levels of mobile phone adoption, including text and internet. About 27 percent of the 181 providers who participated currently use mHealth in care delivery, but in basic applications such as appointment reminders. The potential observed is in chronic disease management support, health education and specific programs such as... Continue Reading
Undermining the system an unintended consequence of telemedicine?
...patients.” Quite a leap of logic here, when his real concern should be quick availability of patient care–not having to wait hours in a doctor’s office or ER/ED because you’re triaged as not bleeding-on-the-floor urgent. Virtual consult rates at least for now also tend to be low–$40-45 per visit–and appealing to those without insurance, not seeing a doctor on a regular basis (no chronic conditions) or anyone with a high deductible. Doctors are still also free, despite Dr Schwamm’s snark, to better utilize their time–and yes, make additional income–through signing on to telemedicine as part of their practice. So is... Continue Reading
ATA trend #1: Is a sustainable RPM infrastructure fact or fiction?
...will result in reduced admission rates, but has shown varying success rates in different disease pathologies. Economic analyses from clinician practices and state/federal governments see utilization of health resources differently. Jonathon Linkous, President of ATA, said that “The American Medical Association and CPT coding committee are moving to look at coding and remote monitoring before paying as a first step in this complicated payment system. We are going to be moving to a new wave of providing healthcare.” On the Federal level, the Chronic Care Management program has recently introduced CPT (current procedural terminology) code 99490 and 99091 for collection... Continue Reading
ATA 2015: Day 1 news
...to permit telemedicine to be used with new patients, as well as payers to include American Well, Teladoc and Doctor on Demand in their plans. POLITICO’s Morning eHealth (Monday)….Honeywell HomMed is now Honeywell Life Care Solutions and upgraded the Genesis Touch to a Bluetooth tablet for reporting blood glucose, PT-INR and peak flow. It is also video conference capable for up to 12 parties. Release (PDF)….Germany’s vitaphone launched their new VITA home telehealth platform for chronic condition monitoring. vitaphone has had a limited US presence for several years, but late last year they joined Qualcomm Life and added a new... Continue Reading
10th Anniversary Article 1: The Next Ten Years of Telecare
...and intimate channels, to provide personalised behaviour change information with the potential of engaging people with chronic conditions and interacting with them in such a way that the impact can be monitored. Perhaps the most impressive existing application is Florence (Flo for short), the SMS system which has rolled out from the NHS in Stoke and which is now being deployed (as Annie) by the Veterans Association in the USA [Veterans Health Administration–Ed.]. The Flo community shares clinical pathways enabling the system to be employed successfully to support many different conditions. Advances and variations of Flo may become ubiquitous for... Continue Reading
Nursing homes vs. hospitals for primary senior care
Another way to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations? A recent New York Times article has kicked off a debate on whether many procedures for older adults can be better delivered in a nursing home or skilled nursing facility (SNF) setting rather than in-patient hospitals. Already serving many seniors for rehabilitation and residential care for multiple chronic conditions and old age-related debilities, the dreaded transfer to hospital may be lessened by a combination of outpatient procedure and installation of 24-hour nursing at these homes. Unbelievably (to this Editor) many of the 16,000 nursing homes in the country do not have round-the-clock nursing staff;... Continue Reading
Weekend Must Read: How an EHR in a teaching hospital gave a patient a 39X overdose
...a pediatric patient with a severe chronic illness, with multiple symptoms requiring multiple medications to control, admitted to University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The article is a case history of the chain of events, both technological and human, that led to an severe overdose of a routine antibiotic medication, which the patient had already been maintained on for years, nearly killing the child. You will see, with horror, how every check-and-balance failed in the prescribing and dispensing procedure, and why. Dr Wachter is not only chief of the medical service and chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at... Continue Reading
HIMSS’ last full day highlights company partnerships
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/himss_chicago_2015-588×337.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]It’s almost time to Say Goodbye to Sinatra’s ‘My Kind of Town’, but there’s still news: Samsung+Partners Healthcare, IMS Health, AliveCor, Interoperability≠Humana, Panasonic+Cisco Samsung and Partners HealthCare announced a direct-to-mobile partnership to develop chronic care management mobile software that monitors vital signs such as blood pressure, blood glucose and weight, as well as delivers mobile patient engagement, medication adherence and wellness self-management. Clinical trial is scheduled for June. Partners has always been a pioneer in the mHealth area, but playing with Samsung, Partners is flying at a slightly higher level than with Wellocracy and certainly the late... Continue Reading
IBM Watson Health adds 2 companies, three partners, moves to Boston and into the cloud
...Johnson & Johnson will be working with Watson on pre/post-operative coaching and education and Medtronic on diabetes management using data from Medtronic devices. IBM is in agreement to acquire two growing data analytics businesses: Cleveland-based Explorys (clinical and financial intelligence and analysis) and Dallas-based Phytel (provider-based population health management). Explorys is a Cleveland Clinic spinoff that has an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) platform and claims one of the largest healthcare databases in the world covering 15 percent of the US population. Phytel is particularly hot as a platform for practice care management under the new Medicare Chronic Care Management reimbursement... Continue Reading
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