How Is RPM Implemented Into Your Organization?

From one of our FQHC clients: 

“I've vetted many vendors over the years and this process was the easiest in terms of implementation while having a significant impact on the health of patients.”

For almost all of our potential clients, how our tech is implemented into the bigger picture can make or break the deal. They are often aggressively vetting a handful of other companies, and what makes us stand out is the seamless integration of our service into your organization’s infrastructure. 

That’s not an exaggeration, either. 

The goal of this entire company is to make things easier—never harder. We’re not asking you to do any heavy lifting. You’ve got enough going on. So, Accuhealth is prepared to do just about everything…

In this post, we’ll cover:

• How RPM Works, The Six Steps
• A Note On Bigger Clients, FQHCs
• Common Concerns With Implementation
• How Implementation Should Work, Day 0 - 31

This is How RPM Works - Six General Steps

 As we said, it’s all about being easy, helpful, and sustainable. We also want to serve as many patients as possible. So, how do we do that? 

1. Selecting your service & setting your goals - You choose a starting point, goals, and who will oversee the implementation of your remote patient monitoring system. 

2. Navigating vendor challenges - Most vendors will require you to learn new software, add steps to your current workflows, or even maintain new software. Accuhealth does it all, but we can’t account for all RPM companies. 

3. Devices, Software, & Platforms - This is the point where you understand the connection between every new aspect of your system, like your patient’s experience with the Evelyn app. 

4. Billing & coding - Your team needs to understand the coding landscape to ensure an RPM revenue stream (learn about G0511 Expansion). 

5. Deployment and team training - RPM was made to work for clinical teams and not stress out administrative ones. This is the point where that really begins. 

6. Patient buy-in and training - Last but not least, it’s time to invite eligible patients to participate, which, thankfully, is becoming easier as people learn about remote health monitoring. 

How It Works For Bigger Clients, FQHCs

For bigger, complicated health systems and centers (like FQHCs), we are more careful. The client experience is similar, but major organizations like yours aren’t just talking about a handful of patients or a handful of claims. We’re talking about thousands. 

That’s why, as Dan Gasparini discusses in his webinar on driving FQHC revenue, we work in phases to build RPM programs that truly work for the organization. We are also full-service, meaning our fees cover everything (clinical staff, cellular-enabled devices, auto-generated claims service, etc.).

Major Concerns With Implementation

After COVID, the remote monitoring space was flooded with false promises and little delivery. A lot of healthcare leadership became hardened to the idea of remote solutions, and most of those money-chasing companies fizzled out. But that time was helpful. 

It gave us a concise list of what not to do if you want to build a successful RPM/CCM program inside of large organizations. 

#1. Compliance needs to be second nature. 

For many companies, HIPAA, HRSA, Medicare, and all other kinds of compliance were hit or miss. Rather than seeing compliance as the bare minimum required effort, they handled it like an afterthought. That’s not how we do it. 

Everything we do, from software integration to patient onboarding and interactions, is prepared and managed with audits in mind. 

#2. Staff bandwidth can’t be the backbone. 

Accuhealth is a full-service remote patient monitoring vendor that handles everything. You and your team make the decisions—we just help execute.

Why?

Clinical and administrative staff, especially at FQHCs and RHCs, are already stretched to the max. You’re looking into remote patient monitoring because it’s been posed to you as a solution, not as another task that your team has to handle. 

We field this concern from potential clients all the time. Leadership wants to make sure that their teams won’t be overloaded (get upset and leave) because this whole new system is too much work. 

Betting the success of a remote care program on your already overloaded staff is not a good idea. 

#3. The system has to be intuitive.

Healthcare is a complicated industry. No other industry has to balance aggressive compliance regulations with the normal considerations of software, such as ease of use, cost efficiency, and scalability. 

On top of that, there is patient eligibility to contend with. Medicare has extremely specific requirements, and then each state has variances in coverage, so for staff to figure out who is a good fit is hard, to say the least. 

Accuhealth makes it easy by including the eligibility process in patient onboarding. Before ever reaching out to patients, we let you know which patients are a good fit. 

In other words, we do it for you. It’s hard to be more “intuitive” than that. 

How Implementation of RPM Should Work, Day 0 - Day 41

Before starting on the RPM journey, there are a lot of internal conversations, meetings, and decisions. And when you do finally decide to proceed, you have to vet companies, which means more conversations, meetings, and decisions. 

You and your team must be sure our offer is worth it and actually possible. There is no room for mistakes or miscalculations, especially for FQHCs. But that means, when implementation finally does happen, it needs to be smooth sailing—and with Accuhealth, it will be. 

(We’ve done this before.)

All of our community health center clients can expect the following experience once they’ve decided to proceed with Accuhealth. 

Day 0: Full patient eligibility analysis. You’ll decide who you want to be involved in this program and who will be approached by Accuhealth. 

Day 1-7: Triage and escalation protocols are established, and onboarding is completed (we work hard to make this part seamless). 

Day 7: Patient consent campaign begins.

Day 10-30: Patients are consenting to receiving and learning their devices.

Day 31: RPM/CCM is operational, meaning our nurses are engaging with patients, and vital data is flowing right into your EHR.

At the end of your first billing cycle, claims are dropped. And at the end of your first reimbursement cycle, our fees are due. 

This webinar will help you learn more about our fee schedule and what you can do with net profits.

We Work Faster & Better Than You’d Think

Not to be repetitive, but WE HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE. Large healthcare organizations are not too complicated for us. We’ve sanded down our processes so that the beginning, middle, and end of our onboarding are easy to understand, simple to use, and meet the challenges of any healthcare software. 

Schedule A Demo

Book a meeting to view a demo and discuss how remote patient monitoring can benefit your patients and practice.