Select the patient groups you'd like to monitor

Innovative Possibilities

Plan and implement a remote patient monitoring program

The best practice in planning a remote monitoring initiative is to first determine the primary diagnosis for the patient group you'd like to monitor and manage. For the CMS Chronic Care Management (CCM) programs, there is a program for non-complex patients who must have a minimum of two. There is another for complex patients who have three or more. The standard CMS Remote Patient Monitoring program requires at least one. Fiscally, the program for complex patients offers significantly greater reimbursements and the opportunity to radically impact frequent ED visits and hospital readmissions. The other programs offer modest revenue, but the greatest opportunity will come from a reduction in reduced ED visits and hospital readmissions. Each program has the potential to markedly enhance patients' quality of life.

Adult patients with most chronic disease are most likely to have more than one. As an example, patients with diabetes are prone to have hypertension. In many instances, obesity is likely to be prevalent as could a respiratory issue. If the goals of your remote monitoring initiative are to reduce excessive ED visits and frequent hospital readmissions, this is your low-hanging fruit. That program also enables you to bill sufficient time to favorably impact reimbursements. You can review the CPT codes and average reimbursements here: Chronic Care CPT Codes and Reimbursement

Intersect on FHIR is designed to support different medical devices for different conditions. Although there is some cost involved in creating an interface for them, our research has shown that Medicare and private payers will cover the device expense as durable medical equipment. Those queried in regard for this program fully support the enrollment of afflicted patients into managed care programs.

For any of these programs, services can be delivered by medical staff. Clinical staff are: Certified Nurse Assistants (CNA), Certified Medical Assistants (CMA), Certified Nurse Specialists (CNS), Nurse Practitioners (NP) and Physician Assistants PA). It is important to note that CPT codes and billable amounts are for monitoring services; All are for non-face-to-face staff time. For complex patients, the base amount is for 60 minutes of non-face-to-face CCM services. There are unlimited add-ons for 30-minute periods. For a patient with over three chronic conditions, you could potentially bill for 150 minutes per month of non-face-to-face time. That amount could be used to determine the amount of staff resources that would be required to administer the clinical portion of the program. Obviously, that would vary with the patients who were enrolled.

The additional tasks required of the provider organization are scheduling and billing. Other tasks such as patient enrollment would either be auto populated from integration with the EHR or performed by Intersect. Intersect will provision patient tablet-appliances preconfigured and ready to use. The devices will either be shipped direct to the patient or to the provider organization for patient pickup. Upon receipt of the package, Intersect will conduct a remote one-on-one program orientation intended to assure a smooth program launch for the patient. The initial patient orientation will be augmented with a business-hours help desk. More severe technical issues will be mitigated by Intersect technical support with remote device access capability.