How to Implement Surgical Remote Monitoring: What is Surgical Remote Monitoring?

Fee-for-service payment models in healthcare reward quantity over quality of medical services. This has led to a shift to value-based care, such as bundled payment models, that incentivize providers to achieve better health outcomes at lower costs. Through bundled payment models, health care providers are reimbursed for treating a patient’s medical condition across the entirety of their surgical episode of care.  

A patient’s surgical journey can be overwhelming for many reasons; from pre-surgery through post-discharge recovery, patients are given verbal instructions and paper booklets which are easily forgotten and misplaced – leading to poor compliance, increased post-surgical complications, long hospital length of stay (LOS), and readmissions. Additionally, the aversion towards seeking in-person care was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the need for more efficient remote patient monitoring.

Increasing communication between provider and patient to avoid adverse events post-discharge is key for success with value-based care. This can be done by leveraging Surgical Remote Monitoring technology to engage, monitor and stay connected with patients from pre-surgery through post-discharge.

Surgical Remote Monitoring programs allow healthcare organizations to: 

• Engage patients with a virtual companion via a patient’s smartphone, tablet or computer that guides them from pre-op preparation through post-op recovery;
• Deliver evidence-based, surgery-specific clinical pathways;
• Monitor patient compliance, symptoms and recovery progress remotely (e.g. temperature, pain levels, incision photos, etc.);
• Automate self-care guidance via smart algorithms and workflows (e.g. automated education for how to manage low-risk issues or when to escalate to a provider);
• Receive alerts and monitor dashboards to identify when a patient’s health status changes, enabling providers to intervene sooner (optional, depending on a care team’s resources); and
• Reduce the surgical backlog caused by the suspension of surgeries during the COVID-19 pandemic

At a time when safety, quality, and innovation are more mission-critical than ever before, Surgical Remote Monitoring enhances the patient experience and also reduces the total cost of care via fewer cancellations, reduced length of stay, readmissions and ED visits.

For example, Baystate Health, a 5-hospital system in Western Massachusetts implemented a Surgical Remote Monitoring platform, and saw: ↓0.9 days LOS, ↓72% readmissions, ↓69% observation stays, ↓13% ED visits, ↓60% discharge to SNF.

When used to its full potential, Surgical Remote Monitoring empowers providers to make data-driven decisions that pave the way for progress.

For more details on how Surgical Remote Monitoring can help you achieve similar results: Check out our podcast episode on “How to Implement Surgical Remote Monitoring” where we discuss the topic in-depth (Timestamp: 0:00-8:35).

Make sure to check out the full whitepaper here for a practical guide on how to get started with a Surgical Remote Monitoring program.