.jpg "Daniel Godla")
Diabetes is one the most prevalent chronic conditions in the US with over 40 million Americans impacted by it. Managing the condition costs up to $640 billion dollars a year. To help combat this, CMS created care management programs, like Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), to improve patient care and outcomes. In this video, we discuss the benefits of utilizing blood glucose monitors within an RPM program to manage diabetes.
Living with diabetes can often be overwhelming for patients. Through monitoring with a continuous glucose monitor under the Remote Patient Monitoring program, that stress can be alleviated for patients.
Remote Patient Monitoring for Diabetes
Through this program, patients receive a glucose monitor and share real-time blood sugar data with care teams through daily readings. Daily monitoring allows for ongoing visibility into their condition. This allows for proactive care that can result in better glycemic control, fewer hospital visits, and more satisfied patients.
Through an RPM program, daily monitoring, combined with outreach from a care manager, can provide a comprehensive picture of how meals, activity, and sleep affect blood sugar in real time. Alerts for dangerous glucose levels are triggered automatically and sent to the care team via software. This allows the care team to be alerted immediately to prevent emergency room or hospital visits, or escalate care in a timely manner.
Care teams can spot trends through readings and adjust insulin dosages or medication regimens between appointments.
Benefits for Both Patients and Providers
Through daily monitoring and monthly outreach from a care manager, RPM empowers patients. Patients get direct insight into their own data, helping them stay engaged in their care and make lifestyle decisions. Improved management of diabetes can facilitate increased self-management and also prevent complications, such as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, nerve damage, vision loss or blindness, poor wound healing, foot ulcers that may result in amputation, and an increased risk of infections.
And lastly, a very important aspect of monitoring diabetes through RPM is that it is remote. This program allows care teams to monitor diabetic patients from their home. This is more convenient for patients and makes care more accessible for patients in rural areas or those dealing with transportation issues. For providers, it can lower the overall cost of managing this chronic disease, along with resulting in improved population health overall.
Additionally, for the provider, the RPM program reimburses for monitoring and time spent on services for the patient.
A blood glucose monitor paired with the RPM program is a useful tool to manage diabetes with benefits for both patients and providers.
ThoroughCare provides all of the necessary components for a successful RPM program, including integrations with devices such as blood glucose monitoring, custom parameters and notifications, facilitating outreach and documentation, capturing time and the necessary information for billing, robust analytics, and much more.
If you’d like to learn more about RPM or remote devices like the blood glucose monitor, subscribe to our Learning Center.
