Remote patient monitoring (RPM) outsourcing allows healthcare organizations to contract third-party companies to provide certain RPM services. As healthcare becomes more competitive, clinics must deliver quality care efficiently and avoid provider burnout. Outsourcing remote patient monitoring tasks can help achieve these goals by generating revenue without significantly impacting a healthcare team’s workload.
Overall, remote patient monitoring outsourcing enables practices to expand their remote monitoring services in a streamlined, cost-effective manner. This article reviews the pros and cons of outsourcing tasks vs. handling them in-house.
How is Outsourcing RPM Possible?
On November 1, 2019, CMS began releasing the 2020 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule, updated yearly. One of the most significant changes for remote patient monitoring reimbursement was for CPT code 99457. This code covers the initial 20 minutes of patient data analysis. The update allows data analysis to be billed ‘incident to’ under general supervision instead of direct supervision.
General supervision means that the billing physician does not need to be in the same building while clinical staff perform RPM services. As a result, Medicare providers can contract third-party companies for RPM outsourcing to assist with tasks like:
- Data review
- Checking up on the patient if they are not using their device regularly
- Device set-up
- Patient education
This enables the clinic to manage more patients and generate more revenue without significantly impacting current workflows.
Pros of RPM Outsourcing
As healthcare becomes more competitive, clinicians must figure out how to deliver quality care in timely and cost-efficient ways. They also want to create a healthy work environment that promotes psychological safety in healthcare for medical teams and patients. When implementing a new remote patient monitoring program, rpm outsourcing is a valuable consideration for the following reasons.
Saves Time and Resources
Before the 2020 update, RPM services had to be performed under the direct supervision of the billing physician. The physician had to be in the same building and immediately available. Many clinics considered this a waste of resources because tasks like teaching the patient how to use the device or looking over data required direct physician supervision.
Today, these tasks can be conducted by an in-house medical team or outsourced to a third-party RPM company. RPM outsourcing gives healthcare businesses a new revenue stream with minimal impact on their current workflow. The physician will only be contacted when their medical expertise is necessary.
No Need to Train or Hire Additional Staff
Another benefit of outsourcing RPM is that physicians don’t have to train their staff to document services or interact with patients. One remote patient monitoring challenge is that it does require some new tasks. Providers can add those tasks to their current nurse and staff workloads, hire new staff, or outsource it.
Increasing the workload may cause burnout, and hiring new staff can be costly. Third-party vendors have trained RNs and other clinical staff familiar with RPM procedures. Outsourcing ensures the smoothest transition into remote patient monitoring. In addition, RPM outsourcing takes the burden of onboarding patients and internal medical staff from the healthcare organization.
Cons of RPM Outsourcing
Remote patient monitoring has the potential to transform healthcare by expanding it outside of the conventional clinic setting into patients’ everyday lives. Because RPM is still relatively new, requirements and procedures are continuously updated to achieve optimal results. Some concerns against RPM outsourcing are covered in the following sections.
Not Generating As Much Net Profit
Integrating RPM into your clinic provides a whole new source of revenue. A common argument against outsourcing RPM is that it may not increase the expected net profit. That is because a portion of monthly revenue will be allocated to outsourcing. Most times, outsourcing RPM services is more cost-effective than hiring new clinical staff or spending internal clinical staff hours on tasks that can be performed by outsourcing remote patient monitoring services.
Clinician Bears 100% Responsibility
Another argument against outsourcing RPM is that the billing physician bears 100% responsibility for the quality of service the third-party company provides. Any service billed ‘incident to’ (in-house or outsourced) assumes physician responsibility.
RPM clinical staff members undergo an extensive credential verification process so physicians don’t have to worry about fraud charges. Additionally, physicians have access to RPM portals. There, they can access their patients’ data, time spent on RPM services, and descriptions of services performed.
Lack of Direct Communication Between Physician and Patient
One of the major benefits of remote patient monitoring is that it can help build better relationships between physicians and their patients who qualify for remote patient monitoring. However, when RPM outsourcing is used, the physician isn’t directly reviewing the data. How can physicians develop better relationships if they’re not the ones constantly going through the data?
The physician always has access to the patient’s information. RPM collects patient health data frequently, and more health data provides physicians with better insights for complex decision-making. Not only will physicians be alerted right away when patients require medical attention, but they’ll also have the most up-to-date information to act upon.
RPM is not meant to substitute for clinic visits. Instead, it focuses on proactive care that identifies complications early, checks how a patient responds to treatments and allows for prompt adjustments if necessary. Patients report feeling better cared for, knowing that a certified care provider regularly analyzes their health data.
Is RPM Outsourcing the Right Move?
Medicare recognizes that remote patient monitoring yields better health outcomes. To incentivize more clinics to adopt RPM, Medicare updated CPT 99457 so that services that don’t require physician knowledge can be outsourced to third-party vendors. Companies like Tenovi offer RPM devices, and work exclusively with RPM software and service companies, chronic care companies, and telehealth companies that want to offer remote patient monitoring services to healthcare providers.
Physicians no longer have to increase clinic workload or hire more staff. Instead, they can outsource to companies with qualified clinical staff who can perform RPM services. Visit Tenovi to find out who we serve and request a free demo of our RPM devices.
