Tech & Innovation in Healthcare

Question: Our outpatient facility performs several surgeries for patients who live in rural areas and have trouble returning for follow-up visits. I’ve read articles about remote patient monitoring (RPM) being used to assess patients with chronic conditions who may have transportation issues or live far from a clinic for follow-up visits.

Could RPM be a viable option for postoperative care?

North Carolina Subscriber

Answer: RPM is a great alternative to repeated follow-up appointments. Healthcare providers do use the technology to receive periodic updates on a patient’s chronic condition and medication adherence, and in recent years, cardiac surgery teams have used RPM to monitor their patients following heart procedures, which has shown promising benefits.

Healthcare providers at Atrium Health’s Sanger Heart and Vascular Institute released their findings for RPM use after heart bypass procedures. The findings were reported for procedures from August 2021 to July 2022.

The organization found that using RPM helped reduce the 30-day mortality rate following a coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedure to 0.59 percent, which is significantly lower than the national average of 2.5 percent.

RPM use is part of Atrium Health’s Perfect Care Initiative, which “aims to improve patient access and education while eliminating disparities in peri-procedural cardiac surgery care,” according to their website. For up to 90 days following discharge, cardiac surgery clinicians use RPM to continue care. Many of the institute’s patients live in rural areas, and returning to the doctor’s office for face-to-face follow-up visits isn’t practical. RPM allows the clinicians to deliver care during the postoperative period without the patient needing to leave their home.