Electronic Health Records For Dummies

Remote patient monitoring

Remote patient monitoring is a cool tool for your EHR kit for primary care practices and practices responsible for managing patients with multiple chronic or complex conditions. You can address the needs of patients who can’t always make regular physical visits to your office or who have chronic conditions in need of constant monitoring. Remote patient monitoring allows healthcare professionals to review patient vital signs, measure physiological responses, and communicate when physical distance prohibits office visits. Remote patient monitoring provides a cost benefit and improved quality to both practitioners and patients thanks to the ease of reporting and quick delivery of information. Doctors can monitor vitals and symptoms without the patient making an office visit, which frees time and office resources to manage patients who require more immediate attention.

Patients can use devices to track everything remotely from daily vital signs to disease- or condition-specific symptoms. Many devices are small and easy to care for; some can even be swallowed! Also, more and more electronics manufacturers are developing remote patient monitoring programs that work in conjunction with existing technology that people already use every day: smartphones, PDAs, PCs, and even cable boxes. So, you know “there’s an app for that” somewhere!

Remote monitoring could include, but is not limited to, communication of

Physiologic measurements: For example, weight, blood pressure, ...