Remote patient monitoring software is software that a doctor's practice uses to run its own programmes for chronic care and remote monitoring. It enrols patients, collects readings from their devices at home, records every call and produces the monthly bills. Its main market is the United States, where the government health plan for older people, Medicare, pays practices a fixed amount each month for this work.
Medicare pays for two related services, each with its own medical codes. Chronic care management (CCM) pays a practice for at least 20 minutes a month of staff time, spent coordinating the care of a patient with two or more long-lasting illnesses. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) pays for supplying a connected device, such as a blood pressure cuff, and for reviewing its readings. For the main RPM code, the device must send readings on at least 16 days in a 30-day period. Each code pays a fixed sum each month, roughly $40 to $60.
So every minute and every reading must be recorded, because the bill depends on them. Here is a typical case. A family practice in Arizona, in the United States, enrols 300 patients with high blood pressure and diabetes. Each patient gets a blood pressure cuff with a mobile SIM, which sends every reading straight to the software, with no phone needed. The software shows a nurse a list of patients, with those who need attention first: one reading of 175/105, and one patient whose cuff has sent nothing for four days. The nurse calls each of them, and a timer in the software records the length of each call. At the end of the month, the software checks each patient: 16 days of readings, and 20 minutes of staff time. It then creates the claims and sends them to the practice's revenue cycle management (RCM) system, which bills Medicare.
The software reads many kinds of device: cuffs, scales, glucose monitors, monitoring wearables and even a CPAP machine. It writes the nurses' notes back into the practice's ambulatory EHR, so that the doctor sees them at the next visit.
The patient must agree to join, and usually pays a small share of each month's cost. The general idea of watching patients from a distance is explained in remote patient monitoring.