Remote patient monitoring, a technology increasingly used by hospitals and health systems, is associated with better outcomes but higher costs, a new study found.
The researchers compared 19,978 hypertension patients from high-RPM clinics to 95,029 patients from low-RPM practices. The former group had fewer hypertension-related acute-care encounters and reduced use of testing, but more primary care outpatient visits and higher total hypertension-related spending, according to the Nov. 7 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Several health systems have adopted the technology in recent years as healthcare has moved to the home. The study's authors were from Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, all in Boston, as well as Rand Corp.