Remote patient monitoring could save $8,000 per patient annually

A study from Geneia LLC, an analytics and technology leader in transforming healthcare delivery, found a savings of $8,375 per monitored patient annually using the @Home patent monitoring system, leading to a savings of $1.1 million per year.

The @Home remote patient monitoring program that helps chronically ill patients and their providers better understand, monitor and manage their health. The study compared the experience of individuals diagnosed with heart failure who enrolled and actively participated in the @Home remote monitoring program, to a control group of non-monitored members with statistically similar pre-program risk scores.

"The @Home remote patient monitoring program is an important and successful component of a robust and comprehensive case management strategy at Capital BlueCross," said Jennifer Chambers, MD, Geneias Chief Medical Officer. "Not only is chronic disease expensive, difficult to manage and a drain on our healthcare system, but it also takes a toll on patients and families, decreasing their quality of life and often leading to an accelerated transition out of the home and into facility-based care."

The results from the study included:

• Slowed disease progression, as measured by patient risk scores. The risk score stabilized: 2 percent increase in the pilot group compared to 31 percent increase in the control group.
• Reduction in hospitalizations:
• Net 45 percent Reduced acute hospital admissions by 45 percent (66 percent reduction in the pilot group and a 21 percent reduction in the control group).
• Reduced heart failure acute hospital admissions  by 34 percent (90 percent reduction in the pilot group and 56 percent reduction in the control group).
• The reduction in hospital admissions means an average per participant, per year savings of $8,375. A typical health plan with one million members, could expect to save about $1.1 million per year.

"The results of the @Home remote monitoring pilot program are promising," Chambers said. "We are confident that more of our seniors struggling with chronic disease will benefit from this technology and, together with their provider and the case management team at Geneia, learn to better understand and manage their chronic conditions and continue to live full and independent lives in their own homes."