Practices That Adopted Remote Physiologic Monitoring Increased Medicare Revenue And Outpatient Visits

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Medical Informatics
• Primary Care Medicine

Background:

• Remote physiologic monitoring (RPM) adoption is rapidly increasing in healthcare.
• Practices face potential benefits like improved patient care and revenue, but also costs like new staff.
• Previous research has not quantified RPM's impact on practice revenue, care delivery, or resource allocation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify the impact of establishing remote physiologic monitoring (RPM) programs on primary care practices.
• To analyze effects on practice revenue, care delivery, and resource allocation.
• To compare outcomes of practices adopting RPM versus matched non-adopting practices.

Main Methods:

• Utilized national Medicare claims data.
• Identified 754 primary care practices adopting RPM between 2019-2021.
• Examined practice-level outcomes through 2023, comparing adopters to matched non-adopters.

Main Results:

• Practices adopting RPM saw a 20.0% increase in Medicare revenue compared to non-adopters.
• Revenue growth was attributed to direct RPM billing, increased outpatient visits, and care management services.
• Revenue increases were primarily driven by higher provider activity, not just more providers (2.7% increase).
• Care volume for RPM patients did not negatively impact care for non-RPM patients.

Conclusions:

• Implementing remote physiologic monitoring (RPM) is financially beneficial for primary care practices.
• RPM can enhance practice revenue and patient care volume without compromising care for the broader patient population.
• RPM adoption drives practice growth through increased provider efficiency and service utilization.