Delivering exceptional care conveniently and promptly via mobile technology is an excellent addition to healthcare solutions. But, like any technology, telehealth has pros and cons to consider.

Pros of telehealth

1. Expansion of new business models

Telehealth as a business model is shifting from consumer-based care to value-based care. Clinicians are investing in technology that offers online services much like a banker, real estate agent, or other businesses. Clinicians with their own telehealth platform can extend their patient base beyond brick-and-mortar facilities, extending hours, and creating new and more convenient models for their patients.

2. Expands access to care

There is an increasing shortage of physicians and telehealth can help maximize provider networks to expand access to care. It can be used to extend the geographical range and reach patients in rural areas and outside of normal care delivery systems. It can be used for midlevel patient education as well as physician diagnosis, reaching a range of people in new ways.

3. Improves clinical workflows & practice efficiency

Telehealth has the potential to increase clinical workflow efficiency. It can serve as the channel for quicker prioritization of care delivery, triaging each case, and improving communication by capturing, storing, and using patient data for better medical decision-making.

4. Surge in practice revenue

Telehealth provides care at reduced overhead costs per visit. It is less time-consuming, both for the patient and clinician. It enables clinicians to reduce costs for patients who miss their appointments and improves the efficiency of a practice. It can also provide a competitive advantage, attracting and retaining more patients with the new care delivery model. Additionally, providers may be able to bill for telehealth services and capitalize on the reimbursement potential of these types of visits.

5. Improved quality of healthcare

With telehealth, patients still receive one-on-one care with their doctors as they would with a regular appointment. It improves quality of healthcare with increased accessibility and efficiency by reducing the need to travel, providing clinical support, overcoming geographic barriers, offering various types of communication devices, and improving patient outcomes.

Cons of telehealth

1. Physical examination is limited

For some clinical conditions, a virtual visit may not be sufficient. Clinicians may not feel comfortable diagnosing or treating a patient over a video chat. Therefore, some patients prefer traditional in-person visits over virtual appointments.

2. Telehealth equipment and technology

Telehealth solutions require purchases that can be costly, and it may require training to use. Clinicians need to hire additional IT staff and purchase servers and additional equipment to the telehealth software.

A virtual care platform with a low cost of entry, little financial risk, and effective security features improves patient outcomes and reduces healthcare costs. Is it time for your organization to invest in telehealth solutions? Contact us today at info@ipatientcare.com

The importance of building smarter digital infrastructure?

The Healthcare industry is extremely unpredictable, it isn’t enough to streamline standard processes, as patient needs can change per their situation. Therefore, healthcare providers need to be prepared with a smarter digital infrastructure that meets the evolving needs and expectations of patients. Additionally, it will enable healthcare organizations to rapidly develop new capabilities within their healthcare system and restructure their workflows as needed.

Elements of building smarter digital infrastructure

There are three main elements of building smarter digital infrastructure relevant to healthcare providers.

Digital core: This includes multi-cloud architectures, which are often made up of six to eight different public or private cloud platforms. This allows the organization to pick the right clouds for the right workloads and provides the ability to deploy and scale infrastructure on demand.

Digital edge: Users, patients, partners, and utility devices drive operational efficiency. It improves user experience and meets the low-latency requirements of certain applications. It can also be scaled to build local analytic capabilities, supporting local data management and analytics for real-time decision-making.

Digital exchange: It is imperative to develop a digital ecosystem with a sustainable growth strategy. Using API-based digital services and exchanges empowers healthcare providers to innovate and collaborate to build new digital capabilities by tapping into these rich ecosystems.

The implications of having the smarter digital infrastructure

Smarter digital infrastructure provides an opportunity to improve current healthcare patterns and develop modern solutions. It enables organizations to make accurate health-related decisions with shared input and active participation from patients, caregivers, and the population at large.

A smarter digital infrastructure is vital for:

• Helping engage the healthcare system, the population, and the patient
• Leveraging existing programs and policies
• Anchoring an ultra-large-scale systems approach
• Emphasizing the decentralization of complex healthcare patterns
• Fostering a sociotechnical perspective, focused on the population
• Weaving a strong trust fabric among each stakeholder
• Allowing continuous evaluation and improvement

How has digital infrastructure transformed patient engagement?

Utilizing digital infrastructure, healthcare organizations can ensure that they’re expanding their strategic advantage for improving patient outcomes. This is of fundamental importance, as there has been a notable shift in how doctors and patients are engaging with each other.

The COVID 19 pandemic has accelerated the already shifting patient engagement and care models. Patients have taken a more active role their own health. This is creating a bit of a shift in the power dynamic where patients enter into a partnership role with their care team. In addition to this, digital health experiences are now preferred not only by younger generations, but across the broader population demographics. COVID-19 has spurred older generations to become adept at using digital platforms where they weren’t before. Organizations will likely need to permanently adopt telemedicine systems into their IT infrastructure.

Each time a health crisis occurs, the healthcare industry learns from it and prepares for  future events. While it is impossible to plan for every possibility, we can ensure our systems and technologies are prepared to react, adapt, and progress with a flexible digital infrastructure and a healthcare system the is ready to respond to unexpected situations.

Together, we can deliver better healthcare outcomes. Learn more about iPatientCare’s innovative healthcare products and value-added services.

Access to Quality Care

Access to quality care refers to the ability of telemedicine services to effectively deliver clinical services to remote patients and the possibility of providing specialized services such as emergency care. This area of consideration can be subdivided into five groups: affordability, availability, accessibility, accommodation, and acceptability. Questions your practice should consider when evaluating access to quality care include:

• How many claims and encounters are submitted and reimbursed? 
• How many patients are retained in treatment on a quarterly, bi-yearly, and yearly basis?
• How many people are using new services?

Financial Impact/Cost
 
This category measurements the financial impact and program cost for patients and their caregivers, the care team and the larger health system, insurance providers and other payers, and the larger community. Examples of financial impact and cost measurements include:

• Reduced patient travel miles
• Cost per visit
• Return on investment

Experience
 
Experience is determined by how user-friendly and effective your telehealth program is for patients and their care team. This category also explores the program’s ability to meet patient and provider needs. Some examples of experience measurements include:

• Provider satisfaction with their telemedicine experience
• Clarity of instructions for care to the patient
• Patients demonstrated compliance with their care plan

Effectiveness
 
Effectiveness explores a program’s clinical, operational, and technical aspects. Factors influencing a program’s effectiveness and acceptance include socioeconomic and environmental settings, the type of technology used, and the type of care being delivered. Measures for success include:

• Timely receipt of consultation after provider request
• User-friendly technologies that facilitate providers ability to work
• The extent to which telemedicine is clinically integrated within a care setting

Measure and evaluate your telemedicine program success utilizing these four key areas: access to quality care, financial impact/cost, experience, and effectiveness. Depending on your clinical challenges, setting, patient population, and practice objectives, evaluations components may differ in priority. The earlier and more precisely your evaluation objectives and questions are identified, the more likely your telemedicine program can be evaluated, designed, and implemented in the ways that will help you give useful and credible answers.

If you are planning to deploy or switch to a robust telemedicine program that meets the needs of your practice, receive a live demonstration of digital healthcare solutions provided by iPatientCare and equip your practice with the best. Contact us today.

To continue with the advancement in productivity, quality, and financial sustainability interoperability in telemedicine plays a very significant role.

What is Interoperability in Telemedicine?

Utilizing telemedicine is not only about getting on a video call consultation with patients. Interoperability in telemedicine enhances the care delivery model by seamlessly integrating with other digital devices to ensure real-time data management during ongoing virtual consultations. Within the healthcare ecosystem, interoperability is a step forward in standardizing care across the continuum and providing access to the right information at the right time, irrespective of the patient’s care setting.

Why is it important to choose a telemedicine solution with robust interoperability?

Usually smaller or rural practitioners pass on high-risk patients to larger healthcare systems. Here interoperable telemedicine solutions play a very important role in sharing patient records directly to the larger healthcare system during a telehealth visit. This automated and seamless data transfer between referring and consulting providers saves time and maintains continuity of care for patients. Also, the patient record is automatically updated with the summarized results of the. Without interoperable telehealth, the whole process would be inefficient and would involve manual entries that follow longer time durations and risk of transcription errors.

How has the current demand for telemedicine impacted interoperability?

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of telemedicine solutions worldwide. At this point it’s not about how virtual visits are getting conducted, it’s about the patient experience during the virtual visit. Therefore, it becomes critical to look at the overall integration of respective services and how they seamlessly integrate to develop an effective virtual care delivery model.

Issues with clinical systems that are not interoperable with your virtual care systems

• Access to relevant patient data during a virtual consultation
• Lower patient engagement
• Unnecessary steps or clicks
• Inability to coordinate care
• Siloed telehealth-related data
• Burdensome patient experience

These are just a few examples of how a lack of interoperability within telemedicine can impact patient care.

If you are planning to deploy or switch to a robust Virtual Care Platform, receive a live demonstration of digital healthcare solutions provided by iPatientCare and ready your practice with the best.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the widespread adoption of Telemedicine technology over traditional in-person practice. According to a report, in 2019 only 11% of U.S. consumers practiced telehealth, but now active consumers have risen to 46%. Additionally, 76% of consumers are interested implementing telehealth services to minimize in-person healthcare visits.

Virtual health has become common practice and it is vital to adapt to the rapidly changing healthcare landscape. Here are some useful tips to help you understand how you should plan a sustainable virtual care delivery model at your practice.

Evaluating the Factors that Influence the Adoption of Telehealth Technology

Investing in the right telehealth technology requires substantial time, patience, and huge market research. Rushing to adopt telehealth was necessary when the COVID-19 pandemic began and there was little time to perform market research. When faced with this great challenge, providers did an amazing job at adapting to telehealth. But, now what? Will rapid adoption sustain the changing demands of your practice? If not, then it may be time to reevaluate your telehealth solution. The following steps will identify how to implement a sustainable, integrated, and comprehensive telehealth program at your practice:

Patients have come to expect virtual visits as part of a continuum of services. If you are able to implement a sustainable telehealth platform, this will give your practice a competitive advantage. Patients will become advocates for your practice, sharing their positive experience of quality, easy-to-use services with others. This in turn can lead to higher patient satisfaction and additional business with heightened outcomes and increased revenue.

It may be time to re-evaluate or adopt a new sustainable telehealth program. iPatientCare Telemedicine Solutions accommodate the ever-changing needs of our clients. Learn more about our personalized systems that seamlessly connect patients with remote healthcare providers, regardless of location, circumstance, or time.

“I do think the fall and winter of 2020 and 2021 are going to be probably one of the most difficult times we’ve experienced in American public health,” CDC Director Robert Redfield has said, citing this probability.

Why a Twindemic is Raises Concerns?

In 2020-21, it is likely we will face our first peak flu season alongside a second COVID-19 spike. With more than 240,000 Americans deceased, COVID-19 hospitalization rates are continuing to rise in many areas of the country. In addition to this, 40 to 50 million Americans are at high risk of contracting the influenza virus. CDC data (2010 – 2019) shows 12,000 – 61,000 deaths and 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations every year due to seasonal flu. The deadly overlapping of two contagious viruses could pose a serious problem for healthcare providers and systems around the nation.

What about this Year’s Flu Shot?

Healthcare officials are advising people to get their flu shot to lower the effects of seasonal flu on public healthcare system. A higher number of vaccinations would make a big difference in lowering the impact of a possible twindemic. According to the CDC, the vaccine’s effectiveness may vary from person to person, depending on their demography. Even if the vaccine doesn’t prevent someone from getting the flu, it may help to lessen serious symptoms.

How a Virtual Care Platform – TELEMEDICINE can Help?

Amidst the anxiety surrounding a twindemic, one thing is evident: patients will seek virtual care platforms to communicate their seasonal flu and/or COVID-19 symptoms with their healthcare providers. The recent pandemic has forced healthcare providers and organizations to adopt telemedicine solutions at a rapid rate.

Telehealth is bridging the gap between patients and healthcare providers. It enables symptomatic patients to stay at home and communicate with clinicians through virtual tools. Thus, helping to reduce the spread of the virus to mass populations and the frontline medical staff. Telehealth solutions can also be used for non-urgent communication to reduce pressure on emergency rooms and clinics.

The possible twindemic demands healthcare providers & organizations across the nation to prepare with a strong virtual care platform. They should expand access to care and reduce the need for in-person clinic visits. These measures will automatically lower the risk of community infection by keeping more sick people at home.

If you are planning to deploy or switch to a robust Virtual Care Platform, receive a live demonstration of digital healthcare solutions provided by iPatientCare and ready your practice with the best.

These are four innovative technology solutions that have the biggest impact on providing high quality healthcare that can empower rural healthcare locations.

• Telemedicine 

Recent advances in telemedicine are making remote consultations and diagnosis easier and more convenient for both patients and providers in rural areas. It has minimized the major challenge that patients encounter, that is long-distance travel for specialty care, and has improved health monitoring, timeliness, and communications within the healthcare system. In addition to clinical services, it can include remote non-clinical services, such as training, administrative meetings, and continuing medical education.

• Electronic health records (EHR)

Electronic health records can drive a rural healthcare system from being reactive to proactive. It enables clinicians to access the patient’s medical data, evaluate previous visits, tests, diagnoses, treatments, medication, and correspondence between other specialists irrespective of the location. It allows for more accurate and personalized care and communicates potential problems before they become a risk. Utilizing such powerful insights, providers can practice timely and accurate care without having to spend hours reaching a specific destination. Additionally, EHRs also enables rural healthcare providers to integrate with other healthcare IT capabilities and features such as telemedicine to approach remote pharmacists, clinicians, staff members, and others at its earliest.

• Virtual Reality (VR)

One of the major challenges rural areas or communities face is a lack of the latest healthcare tech expertise. Rural communities rarely have access to specialized training on advanced technologies as it is extremely hard to attract trained medical staff, and harder to retain them for an extended period. Virtual reality can be used to bring specialized training to the rural landscape through training simulations. Using VR providers can be part of a realistic healthcare setting and a range of scenarios can be developed that allow them to gain practical experience without being in the emergency room.

• Wearable technologies

Wearable sensors are already impacting the healthcare setting enabling continuous, and longitudinal health monitoring outside of the clinic. Healthcare providers can adopt wearables to facilitate automated health event prediction, prevention, and intervention. Newly available wearables connected to mobile applications are continuously monitoring vital information and provides fast and easy access to health data. Since vital signs are such a crucial part of the patient check-up, these wireless wearables could play a huge role in the widespread adoption of telemedicine, especially for rural patients.

Several rural areas are in dire need of basic healthcare technology, that can enhance care delivery and allow much more efficient and accurate diagnosis. Leveraging technology can reduce the need for long distance traveling for basic healthcare needs. It can also enable the rural population to have easy, affordable, and quick access to quality care.

Real change can be attained only when urban and rural communities get the same access to quality healthcare.

In the event of pandemics such as COVID-19, when patients need their providers the most, healthcare organizations and clinicians are facing their biggest hurdles in patient outreach. However, vitual visit capabilities like telehealth and remote monitoring have proved to be valuable tools to help healthcare professionals triage incoming cases based on each patient’s condition.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also introduced unexpected inabilities within the limits of the meaningful connection with patients in need. On top of this, healthcare teams are overworked, overwhelmed, and anxious about their well being and that of their loved ones too.

To impart risk-free quality healthcare, virtual solutions like Remote Patient Monitoring solution have played a crucial role in achieving vigilant supervision of patients while limiting caregivers’ direct exposure to COVID-19.

For providers, this is the prime time to hold on and accelerate the deployment of remote patient monitoring technology, to ensure that chronic conditions of existing patients are managed in a way that can improve outcomes and reduce the need for regular healthcare facility visits. From sophisticated sensors to advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), there are a variety of underlying technologies available to enable wearable medical devices collect and transmit accurate data to support virtual consultations and remote monitoring.

Deploying a new technology at the point of use can also be challenging for both providers and patients, but as the society becomes more technology-oriented, it won’t be that tough for patients as it was before. If patients are not much techno-friendly, and cannot utilize the solution themselves – then there is often a care network of family members or professionals who can assist them for the same.

For providers, connectivity challenges and ensuring that data is being collected reliably by the device can be solved with careful product design and simple set-up requirements. Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) approved four Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for the reimbursement of remote patient monitoring (RPM).

CPT codes for the provision of RPM include:

• CPT Code 99453: Remote monitoring of physiologic parameter(s) (e.g., weight, blood pressure, pulse oximetry, respiratory flow rate), initial; set-up and patient education on use of equipment. (Initial set-up and patient education of monitoring equipment)
•  CPT Code 99454: Device(s) supply with daily recording(s) or programmed alert(s) transmission, each 30 days. (Initial collection, transmission, and report/summary services to the clinician managing the patient)
• CPT Code 99457: Remote physiologic monitoring treatment management services, clinical staff/physician/other qualified health care professional time in a calendar month requiring interactive communication with the patient/caregiver during the month; first 20 minutes
• CPT Code 99458: Each additional 20 minutes (List separately in addition to code for primary procedure)
• CPT Code 99091: Collection and interpretation of physiologic data (e.g., ECG, blood pressure, glucose monitoring) digitally stored and/or transmitted by the patient and/or caregiver to the physician or other qualified health care professional, qualified by education, training, licensure/ regulation (when applicable) requiring a minimum of 30 minutes, each 30 days.

Emerging use of wearables

When technology has been introduced to fashion statements, tech vendors are using rings, wristbands, earpieces, sensor patches, and wearable devices in their varied forms, which can provide continuous remote monitoring in an appropriate, and modest manner. Many of us are already using smartwatches that can track our daily activities and provide general wellness records. It’s not at all uncommon now for these smartwatches to keep tabs on key biometric signals, such as heart rate, blood-oxygen levels (SpO2), and body temperature.

Health-monitoring wearables provide another set of eyes and ears, so to speak, to healthcare professionals, enabling them to remotely keep tabs on their patients. This can be useful in a time such as now, when virtual consultation is experiencing a boom.

Here’s how RPM can benefit patient engagement during COVID-19

• Decreasing the risk of infection to other patients, community members, and healthcare workers.
• Patients get on-demand, quick and timely care, even without going to the hospital.
• Providing qualitative measurements of the patient’s health status to monitor infection.
• Helping ease the patient’s anxieties over disease progression when in isolation or social distancing.
• Patients can recover without getting hospitalized which helps with potential hospital bed shortage.
• Helping flatten the curve of the infected population so that the healthcare systems don’t get overwhelmed.

As the current pandemic unfolds, we will be seeing more and more healthcare organizations accelerating the deployment of the infrastructure needed for remote patient monitoring and also integrating virtual visit solutions into the healthcare providers’ electronic health record (EHR) systems.

If you are also looking to deploy one of the best Virtual Consultation Technology within your healthcare system then you can have a live demonstration of digital solutions provided by iPatientCare.

iPatientCare is rapidly extending its current solutions and creating new solutions to support healthcare organization’s response to covid-19 pandemic.

Providers are willing to use EHR application at its utmost capacity, to decrease hospital overcrowding and bring down the spike in number of the patients. Therefore, the EHR community has broadened its impact on more than just EHR implementation. EHR vendors and organizations have also stepped up to help limit the coronavirus impact by making telemedicine as a mainstream option.

Increased use of integrated ‘Telehealth’ solution.

Telehealth solutions are gaining demand due to the overcrowding of hospitals and the immense need for social distancing to help limit the spread of the virus. Integrating an EHR system with telehealth solutions can further help organizations make the fullest use of technology, and improve clinical workflows.

Catching up with the trend, EHR vendors now a days are already providing an integrated telehealth solution, specifically designed to be integrated with EHR platforms, which allows patient information to pass easily from one interface to another. When used together, telehealth and EHR systems can significantly improve the care delivery system, simplify data collection, decrease overhead costs, and reduce mortality rates for the chronically ill.

It helps with automate data entry – Without EHR and telehealth integration, clinical workflow becomes more chaotic. After consulting with a patient remotely, providers create a summary of the telehealth visit. If the telehealth system isn’t integrated with the provider’s EHR system, then the provider will have to enter that same information into the patient’s health records, which reduces efficiency in the workplace. But, integrating EHR and telehealth solution, eliminates the need for duplicate data entries. The information collected, automatically goes into the patient’s health record, simplifying the data entry process. This also reduces the chances of making an error when updating the EHR system, ensuring providers have access to current, accurate information.

It helps with synchronizing patient insurance information – Many insurance companies cover telehealth visits. Keeping track of telehealth visit coverage becomes a challenge if a provider doesn’t have access to patients’ insurance information at the time of the visit. Therefore, using an integrated telehealth solution can verify patient eligibility before they sign up for a virtual consultation. EHR integration ensures providers reimbursement for their time and services, reducing confusion and costly delays in the workplace.

It helps in streamlining virtual care experience – To enable efficient care experience, providers need to have access to the patient’s medical records while diagnosing a patient. EHR Integrated telehealth visit provides access to a patient’s medical history and facilitate the same efficient care as an in-person consultation. An integrated system also helps patients to understand their diagnoses. Patients can see a summary of their virtual visit along with the rest of their medical history. Automatically updated patient’s health records will always help patients to have access to the latest information even when virtually consulting with other providers.

With telehealth’s virtual care operations easily accessible from one platform, providers can have access to a faster and safer service that allows patients to get more of the care they need. With EHR combined with telehealth services, healthcare staff can also complete all of the necessary procedures for a patient visit in one session.

This efficient, streamlined process can be a significant time-saver. As a result, providers can see more patients throughout the day without overburdening their schedules, allowing their practices to increase on revenue. Providers may even have more time to spend with their patients during visits, improving provider-patient relationships, and the overall level of service a patient receives.

Searching the right Electronic Health Record (EHR) software that goes above and beyond the provider’s expectation is a tough task. iPatientCare’s telehealth integrated EHR is an inclusive software for all your current requirements. It contains features like online billing and scheduling for patients and e-prescribing software that can allow your medical staff to provide remote patients everything they need on one dashboard, saving time and simplifying those tasks. Here is a demo to simplify all your requirements.

As the model, slowly and steadily shifts from fee-for-service payment to value-based payment, telehealth will be used as both a fee-for-service revenue stream and a value-based cost-avoidance tool.

Let’s have a look at the areas where the contribution of telehealth from fee-for-service payment to value-based payment will have a significant impact.

• Clinical Decision-Making:

Telehealth enhances collaborative working among healthcare professionals as it enables general practitioners and nurses to develop their skills and actively participate in diagnosis and decision-making by contributing primary care–specific knowledge to the consultation.

• Detection of changes in Clinical Status:

The power of direct care i.e provider-to-patient via telemedicine technology is highly recognized by clinically integrated networks and ACOs. It facilitates early detection of the clinical status change and helps in reducing ED visits, as well as frees us the office appointment slots for fee-for-service patients.

Detection of changes in clinical status plays an important role for patients with mild acute infections, where it needs follow-ups with close monitoring almost daily. With the help of telemedicine, appropriate actions can be taken immediately for any changes in the clinical statuses.

• Billing:

The final rule for the 2020 Physician Fee Schedule gives hospitals and health systems more opportunities to use remote patient monitoring and paves the way for new telehealth programs, expanding the opportunities to use connected health services for management and coordination.

The American Medical Association has added several new codes to its 2020 CPT code set to support remote patient monitoring and telehealth services. These codes are intended to advance the adoption of digital health tools by clarifying payment complexities connected to the use of telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and other technologies.

• Reimbursement:

Telemedicine reimbursement keeps on evolving as value-based models grow. With notable expansions in Medicare and Medicaid coverage, the reimbursement landscape looks promising for telehealth technologies.

Latest: CMS is adding more than 80 new telehealth services to the list of services covered by Medicare during the Coronavirus pandemic – and reiterating that all connected health services are now reimbursed at the same rate as in-person services.

• Medicare Advantage:

The new proposed rule, effective from 2020, will allow Medicare Advantage to offer telehealth services as part of their basic benefits package. These benefits can be available in a variety of places, and you can use them at home instead of going to a health care facility.

Medicare Advantage plans will also include the coverage of services available for the treatment of COVID-19.

• Community-based care:

Community-based health care is for people of all ages who need health care assistance at their homes. Community care services include home support, nursing, physiotherapy, and other rehabilitation services.

Growth of community-based care management and clinical response teams enable the success of remote patient monitoring (RPM), that is, technology alone will not succeed unless deployed within a functional system that responds to changes in clinical status, Many health care organizations are exploring strategies to leverage technology, including telehealth, to increase consumer engagement and focus on prevention and chronic care management outside the traditional physician office visit.

• Remote monitoring:

Telehealth has the potential to improve remote monitoring and self-care strategies and, ultimately, reduce treatment costs by keeping people out of the hospital and emergency room, and reducing physician office visits.

Remote patient monitoring technology continues to evolve and enhance patient experience with much greater involvement in the management of their health, eliminating nursing and hospitalization costs.

• Convergence of technologies:

The convergence of several technologies has revolutionized healthcare – the advent of EMRs and the ability of big data to aid in the analyses of protocols, remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence been a boon to the industry. Also, the balance of power has shifted from providers to the patient in a large part. Big data and technology platforms have affected several experiences. They offer patients/consumers the ability to adjust their behaviors based on others’ outcomes and the ability to connect with healthcare professionals at their convenience. Technology changes the way our society manages health overall—shifting the paradigm from fee for care to value for care.

The growing need telemedicine to cut costs and improve healthcare delivery is pushing providers away from long-lasting, volume-based healthcare models to the more practical and considered ‘value-based healthcare’ model.

This care model aims to completely adjust payment and objective measures of medical quality of care. It drives outcomes and wellness in a proactive rather than a reactive model. value-based care model seems like a win-win situation for both patient and provider.