A staggering 97% of medical practices experienced a negative financial impact at the beginning of the pandemic, including a 60% decrease in patient volume and a 55% decline in revenue.1 Nearly three years later, more than half of hospitals are still experiencing negative margins.2
To ensure success in this actively evolving landscape, health systems must equip themselves with the right tools to enhance decision making and reduce administrative burden through frictionless clinician experiences. Digital health solutions are critical enablers of success, especially having demonstrated clinical and real-world outcomes in all reimbursement settings.
In a traditional payment model, digital solutions can help health systems:
Leverage remote monitoring codes for reimbursement
Health systems have several options for pursuing reimbursement when providing remote care, including codes for remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM), remote physiologic monitoring (RPM), and chronic care management (CCM). Yet, the challenge of obtaining consistent, objective data – a criteria that many codes require for reimbursement eligibility – can become an obstacle. Digital health solutions can seamlessly capture patient data such as medication adherence, and even feed that data directly into a clinician’s EHR for efficient monitoring and clinical decision support.
Identify the right patients for the right treatments at the right time
Without a clear understanding of how patients are managing their conditions at home, interventions are more likely to take place either too early or too late. Clinicians must be able to proactively identify patients who require in-person visits or step-up therapy before an exacerbation or readmission occurs. Digital solutions that provide care teams enhanced visibility into an entire patient panel’s disease control, particularly in between routine check-ups, can better enable risk stratification and have been proven to improve outcomes with increased preemptive out-patient visits – up to 2.6 more visits per patient per year.3
Improve clinical efficiency and throughput
Thinly-stretched clinical staff and physician burnout continue to negatively impact health systems. About one half of providers are burnt out, and 60% report that the burden of administrative tasks is the underlying cause.4 Physicians estimate that a third of their work can be performed by non-physicians,1 so there are several opportunities for care teams and clinicians to practice at the top of their licenses, alleviating some of the administrative burden physicians are experiencing. The right digital solutions can facilitate this care coordination, ultimately boosting clinical efficiency and increasing the volume of patients that can be treated in-clinic.
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1 Deloitte, 2021. Equipping Physicians for Value-Based Care.
2 Kaufman, Hall & Associates, 2022. The Current State of Hospital Finances: Fall 2022 Update.
3 Merchant et al., 2018. Impact of a Digital Health Intervention on Asthma Resource Utilization, WAOJ.
4 Medscape, 2022. Physician Burnout & Depression Report 2022: Stress, Anxiety, and Anger.