Cancer

Oncology telehealth enables patients to receive high quality care from the comfort of their own homes through remote patient monitoring. It provides security for these patients and their families, while also improving patient outcomes and reducing the overall cost of care.


Neutropenic fever is a common complication for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Remote patient monitoring devices like wearable temperature sensors offer the potential to reduce hospitalizations and deaths in vulnerable populations like chemo patients. The sensors can detect an abnormal temperature reading and flag it for the patient and oncologist to actively monitor, or in serious cases, go to the hospital for observation.

Cancer Treatment

Hospital readmissions are common among patients with cancer, and are often avoidable and due to a lack of symptom management. RPM for patients on home health has shown to reduce hospital admission rates.

By providing cancer patients with RPM services, the patient can share the symptoms they're experiencing through symptom surveys, allowing the clinician to see if there's been any changes and to evaluate whether intervention is needed.

Often, the only chance a patient has to share symptoms with their physician or specialist are during in person visits. Depending on the frequency of these visits, critical symptoms can go undetected for extended periods of time, putting the patient at risk. Patients may forget important symptoms that they experienced or feel like a burden sharing these with their provider.

Engaging the patient in daily or frequent symptom surveys allow the patient more opportunities to express concern around their condition. An automated symptom survey normalizes the way patients are able to share the symptoms that they are experiencing and increases the chances that an effective intervention will take place.

Advantages

advantages of digital healthcare
  • Expanded capacity/access: Our platform expands healthcare access, reaching more patients, breaking barriers, and ensuring care is accessible anytime, anywhere.
  • Reduced Cost: Home health care through our platform decreases operating costs, which can help clinics and hospitals provide high-quality care more cost-effectively.
  • Individually Tailored Treatment: The platform offers personalized medical treatment, adapted to the individual needs of each patient. This guarantees effective and specific medical care for each case.
  • Scheduling Convenience: Patients can easily schedule their consultations and follow-ups, improving their experience and avoiding long wait times at medical facilities.
  • Reduced Transportation Barriers: By providing care in the home, we eliminate the need for transportation for patients, which can be especially beneficial for those with limited mobility.
  • Greater Privacy While Receiving Treatment: Patients can receive medical care in a more private and comfortable environment, fostering a sense of trust and comfort during treatment.
  • Environmental Benefits: Home health care reduces the carbon footprint by reducing the need for travel and the use of unnecessary medical resources.

Key Considerations For Selecting an RPM Partner

With so many companies now proclaiming themselves as having the "the best RPM solution on the market", how do you choose the one that is right for your heart program? Here are some questions to try and objectively compare your options:

1. What is important for you?

Decide which remote monitoring services are the most important for you to offer. BP cuffs and scales are appropriate for a CHF targeted patient population but that may differ if you are targeting other chronic conditions. Ideally you would pick an RPM partner that has a multitude of device options so you can expand your options through a single vendor platform.

MemberCare Platform Advantage:

MemberCare platform has support for many different devices from multiple manufacturers. Information is conveniently made available to the entire multidisciplinary team to intervene appropriately.

2. Ease of use

Pay close attention to ease of use and setup. How much work will be required to start the RPM program and maintain it? Does it fit easily into your clinical workflows or can it be customized to do so? Functionality will play a large role in its usefulness and adoption by both patients and your staff.

MemberCare Platform Advantage:

It is extremely easy to enroll patients into the program. You can order devices to patients within a matter of few seconds. Devices will be directly shipped to patients. You can send all the information to setup via digital education capabilities built into the platform. Staff members do not have to struggle with the technical issues faced by the patients.

3. Financial Dynamics

Get a clear understanding of the financial dynamics of the RPM devices. Do you need to purchase them and then distribute them to patients? Do patients purchase or lease them directly from the RPM vendor? Related to this, who provides training and support for the RPM devices if they there are issues – you or the RPM vendor? This will determine the overall fees you pay and can vary widely depending on the RPM vendor and approach taken.

MemberCare Platform Advantage:

MemberCare platform takes the just-in-time inventory approach. You never have to order many devices and store on your premises. At the time of enrolling the patient into the RPM program, you can order device from our platform and it will be directly shipped to the patient. You have the option to pay or lease the device from us. We provide unlimited training to your staff.

4. Revenue Cycle

What are the revenue cycle implications of your RPM approach? How will your RPM activity be coded and billed – by your organization or the RPM vendor partner?

MemberCare Platform Advantage:

MemberCare platform has both the options. We have partnered with RPM billing experts who can do the RPM billing. Our solution is nicely integrated with the billing system. If you prefer to use your existing RCM processes, we can post superbills which includes all the information required for billing.

5. Technology

What is the technological approach of the RPM devices – cellular, digital or a combination depending on the device?. Is the vendor technology capable of handling large number of patients?. CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) will generate a data point every 5 minutes for a given patient. Is the vendor technology scalable to handle such scenarios ?

MemberCare Platform Advantage:

We support both WiFi and cellular devices. MemberCare platform is built with latest and greatest cloud technology. We can easily support millions of patients each with multiple devices. This massively scalable platform can handle CGM scenarios and we have support for all the industry leading CGM devices.

6. Does it support Chronic Care Management

If you are currently offering chronic care management (CCM) services, how does the RPM strategy integrate with your CCM program? Is the RPM data consolidated with your CCM data giving you an integrated picture of patient status or are they totally separate?

MemberCare Platform Advantage:

MemberCare platform has a seamless support for CCM. Our care plan design capabilties will aid the care team to easily assign the appropriate goals and track them. RPM data automatically flows into rest of the use cases, including CCM. This helps the care team to have a 360 degree view of the patient status.

7. Mobile applications for care team and patients

In order to improve outcomes and reduce cost you to have make best use of technology. You need mobile applications to make patients take active participation in their care journey. You also have to help care delivery team with all the information at their finger tips, native mobile apps is very essential.

MemberCare Platform Advantage:

MemberCare platform offers native mobile applications to both patients and care delivery team. They can download the apps from app stores and install on either iPhone or Android.

Cancer Treatment & Physical Activity.

Based on the results of two studies at ESMO23, the level of physical activity of patients with cancer remains mostly low and the topic does not get discussed with their oncologists. Most patients would like their clinicians to initiate such discussions. Based on these findings, oncologists are called to take a proactive approach discussing physical activity with their patients and recommend it as an integral part of cancer treatment.

Innovative interventions can and should be used to encourage patients to become (more) active and to ensure ongoing support throughout the treatment journey. Oncologists can play an important role in supporting patients during and beyond cancer treatment.

Oncologists play a vital role in encouraging patients with cancer to be physically active

Image of cancer and physical activity This image is from ESMO

Oral Oncolytics

It's essential for healthcare providers to closely monitor patients receiving oral oncolytics to ensure treatment effectiveness and manage potential side effects. The use of these drugs has become more prevalent in cancer care, offering another tool in the fight against various types of cancer.

Image of cancer and physical activity

Remote monitoring can save cancer patients' lives

Neutropenic fever is a common complication for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. In fact, one out of every 29 chemotherapy-treated patients is hospitalized, with a startling mortality rate of 7-9.5%. Fevers can come on suddenly and sometimes go unnoticed until it's too late.

Remote patient monitoring devices like wearable temperature sensors offer the potential to reduce hospitalizations and deaths in vulnerable populations like chemo patients. The sensors can detect an abnormal temperature reading and flag it for the patient and oncologist to actively monitor, or in serious cases, go to the hospital for observation.

Image of cancer and physical activity