A Remote Patient Monitoring Intervention for Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Chronic Heart Failure: Pre-Post Economic Analysis of the Smart Program

The Clinical Impact and Good Practices of Remote Patient Monitoring for Chronic Heart Failure: A French Case Report

Purpose

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) can improve the management of chronic diseases. Since 2019, RPM in chronic heart failure (CHF) management has been internationally supported. However, evidence on the clinical impact and good practices of RPM is scarce. We present a case of a patient with CHF that used RPM in France.

Patients and Methods

A 74-year-old male was diagnosed with CHF (NYHA I) at the AP-HP Cochin Hospital in January 2020. He faced repetitive hospitalizations for acute heart failure and acute kidney injury. The causes of these acute episodes were unknown. Three therapeutic interventions were implemented (diuretic treatment, RPM and therapeutic education sessions). The patient answered questionnaires regularly and directly through the RPM web application named Satelia®Cardio. Therapeutic education was provided to instruct the patient about his symptoms and treatment management.

Results

Since November 11, 2020, the patient had seven hospitalizations representing a total length of stay of 76 days over a period of 15 months and 2 weeks. Pericarditis was diagnosed as a potential cause and a pre-operative checkup was performed. No tangible benefits were found with diuretic treatment and therapeutic education since they had no effect on stopping the acute episodes leading to hospitalization. RPM did not trigger any clinical alerts until his last hospitalization. During this stay, a clinical telehealth nurse reviewed the patient's clinical setup and found that his initial baseline weight was incorrectly inputted. Since amending this, there were no new episodes. A high-risk, complex and costly heart surgery for pericardial decortication was avoided, and patient satisfaction has increased.

Conclusion

To respect good practices, inclusion not only involves adding or registering a patient to a telehealth activity and database but involves redesigning the management and pathway of patients in order to conduct periodic and personalized clinical care via integrated technology into routine care.

Cost-effectiveness of noninvasive telemedical interventional management in patients with heart failure: health economic analysis of the TIM-HF2 trial

BACKGROUND

Noninvasive remote patient management (RPM) in patients with heart failure (HF) has been shown to reduce the days lost due to unplanned cardiovascular hospital admissions and all-cause mortality in the Telemedical Interventional Management in Heart Failure II trial (TIM-HF2). The health economic implications of these findings are the focus of the present analyses from the payer perspective.

METHODS AND RESULTS

A total of 1538 participants of the TIM-HF2 randomized controlled trial were assigned to the RPM and Usual Care group. Health claims data were available for 1450 patients (n = 715 RPM group, n = 735 Usual Care group), which represents 94.3% of the original TIM-HF2 patient population, were linked to primary data from the study documentation and evaluated in terms of the health care cost, total cost (accounting for intervention costs), costs per day alive and out of hospital (DAOH), and cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY). The average health care costs per patient year amounted to € 14,412 (95% CI 13,284-15,539) in the RPM group and € 17,537 (95% CI 16,179-18,894) in the UC group. RPM led to cost savings of € 3125 per patient year (p = 0.001). After including the intervention costs, a cost saving of € 1758 per patient year remained (p = 0.048).

CONCLUSION

The additional noninvasive telemedical interventional management in patients with HF was cost-effective compared to standard care alone, since such intervention was associated with overall cost savings and superior clinical effectiveness.

Aligning mission to digital health strategy in academic medical centers

The strategies of academic medical centers arise from core values and missions that aim to provide unmatched clinical care, patient experience, research, education, and training. These missions drive nearly all activities. They should also drive digital health activities - and particularly now given the rapid adoption of digital health, marking one of the great transformations of healthcare; increasing pressures on health systems to provide more cost-effective care; the pandemic-accelerated funding and rise of well-funded new entrants and technology giants that provide more convenient forms of care; and a more favorable regulatory and reimbursement landscape to incorporate digital health approaches. As academic medical centers emerge from a pandemic-related reactionary digital health posture, where pressures to adopt more digital health technologies mount, a broad digital health realignment that leverages the strengths of such centers is required to accomplish their missions.

Mobile App-Based Remote Patient Monitoring in Acute Medical Conditions: Prospective Feasibility Study Exploring Digital Health Solutions on Clinical Workload During the COVID Crisis

Background

Digital remote patient monitoring can add value to virtual wards; this has become more apparent in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Health care providers are overwhelmed, resulting in clinical teams spread more thinly. We aimed to assess the impact of introducing an app-based remote patient monitoring system (Huma Therapeutics) on a clinician’s workload in the context of a COVID-19–specific virtual ward.

Objective

This prospective feasibility study aimed to evaluate the health economic effects (in terms of clinical workload) of a mobile app on a telephone-based virtual ward used in the monitoring of patients with COVID-19 who are clinically ready for discharge from the hospital.

Methods

A prospective feasibility study was carried out over 1 month where clinician workload was monitored, and full-time equivalents savings were determined. An NHS hospital repurposed a telephone-based respiratory virtual ward for COVID-19. Patients with COVID-19 in the amber zone (according to the National Health Service definition) were monitored for 14 days postdischarge to help identify deteriorating patients earlier. A smartphone-based app was introduced to monitor data points submitted by the patients via communication over telephone calls. We then comparatively evaluated the clinical workload between patients monitored by telephone only (cohort 1) with those monitored via mobile app and telephone (cohort 2).

Results

In all, 56 patients were enrolled in the app-based virtual ward (cohort 2). Digital remote patient monitoring resulted in a reduction in the number of phone calls from a mean total of 9 calls to 4 calls over the monitoring period. There was no change in the mean duration of phone calls (8.5 minutes) and no reports of readmission or mortality. These results equate to a mean saving of 47.60 working hours. Moreover, it translates to 3.30 fewer full-time equivalents (raw phone call data), resulting in 1.1 fewer full-time equivalents required to monitor 100 patients when adjusted for time spent reviewing app data. Individual clinicians spent an average of 10.9 minutes per day reviewing data.

Conclusions

Smartphone-based remote patient monitoring technologies may offer tangible reductions in clinician workload at a time when service is severely strained. In this small-scale pilot study, we demonstrated the economic and operational impact that digital remote patient monitoring technology can have in improving working efficiency and reducing operational costs. Although this particular RPM solution was deployed for the COVID-19 pandemic, it may set a precedent for wider utilization of digital, remote patient monitoring solutions in other clinical scenarios where increased care delivery efficiency is sought.