Remote Monitoring Lowers Cost, Improves Health Care Convenience
Online health care in the U.S. could save $197 billion the next 25 years, said Kauffman Foundation Vice President Robert Litan on a panel on remote monitoring at the National Press Club. Remote monitoring could cut care costs for 10 million Americans, including the elderly, the disabled and chronic disease patients, he said. Checking vital signs online and video chats with physicians are alternatives to in-home care, nursing homes, extended hospital stays and frequent doctor visits, he said. For $1,000 a patient yearly, it could reduce hospital crowding and emergency room traffic, Litan said.
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Remote monitoring technology is well-developed but underused, Litan said. Only 17 percent of health facilities practice telemedicine, partly because of the expense of putting gear in place. Rural areas best suited to benefit from remote monitoring often can’t justify the outlay, Litan said, and some don’t have broadband. “These access barriers are hard to resolve if we're spending money we don’t need to spend in other areas of our health care system,” said Jody Hoffman of Better Health Care Together.
Increasing demand for broadband is the first step to adopting remote monitoring, said Connected Nation CIO Tom Ferree. “Once people understand that broadband can mean better and less-expensive health care, they will demand broadband from their communities,” he said. Encouraging use of broadband encouraging providers to improve connectivity, and consistent connections are requisite for remote monitoring. When checking a patient’s heart rate, doctors could read a momentary service interruption as a heart attack, Litan said. “You don’t need a lot of speed, but you do need priority of service.”
Full implementation means more than building better networks. Litan’s theoretical $197 billion savings depends heavily on the changing political climate and health care reform, as well as evolving telemedicine policy. Litan said $44 billion of his total assumes insurers and broadband providers develop “friendly policies” to encourage deployment. Litan said insurance companies must cover telemedicine costs, which they don’t do now.
Broadband providers must improve networks and set rules for medical data equivalent to real-world privacy standards, he said. Protecting information and ensuring data integrity is doctors’ greatest concern, said Neal Neuberger of the Institute for e-Health Policy. Treating patients online or relying on electronic health records containing data from outside or unknown sources poses major liability, he said. The state-based licensing system for medical professionals is also a hurdle to online treatment. Full implementation would require the cooperation of lawmakers, broadband providers, insurance companies, the FCC, the SEC and other agencies, Neuberger said.