Remote Patient Monitoring Expected for 36 Million Patients by 2020
Fort Lauderdale, FL , April 5, 2016 (Newswire.com) - By Steven R. Gerst, MD, MBA, MPH, CHE
By 2020 (in 5 years), Berg Insight projects 36.1 million patients will be monitored from home annually, generating over $28 billion in annual revenues. This is up from 4.9 million patients in 2015 - a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.9%.
Of the $28 billion, 71% of the revenues will be generated from medical devices and 46.3% of total revenues will be for mHealth connectivity solutions, care delivery platforms and mHealth care programs.” These care platforms will involve telecom carriers, analytics reporting and perhaps connections to electronic medical records systems used by patients, hospitals and physician/provider offices. This will allow patients/providers to select their own Bluetooth, BLE, WiFi and cellular devices.
By 2020, 15.2 million patients are expected to select their own RPM devices to be connected to these care platforms annually via “BYOD” or “Bring Your Own [Connected] Device.” Cellular connectivity is projected to account for 19.2 million connections to support these devices. Cellular connectivity can be built into the device or the device can be connected to a Bluetooth hub. This will allow monitoring by multiple devices with cellular data then sent to the cloud or the patient’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR) records.
Source: Berg Insight
Rapid Adoption
An aging population, advancements in medical technology, rapidly increasing internet connectivity and broadband cellular access providing ever increasing inexpensive data transmission and cloud storage capacity to support video telemedicine visits is leading to the rapid adoption of RPM.
Drivers of rapid adoption will include: (1) avoidance of new U.S. Government Hospital imposed 30 day Readmission financial penalties and the consequent loss of inpatient revenue (which impact the facility’s profits), and; (2) generation of new “top line” revenues (and commensurate profits) through hospital billings for the new Medicare Reimbursement monthly capitated codes involving (a) “Chronic Care Management” (CPT Code 99490) of $41.92 per chronically ill patient for “non-face to face visits” for 12 months or more, and (b) post discharge “Transitional Care Management” codes (99495 and 99496).
Under CMS’ Hospital Readmission Reduction Program for the Inpatient and Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System, last year 2,610 U.S. hospitals (75% of the facilities subject to readmissions penalties under the program), were expected to receive penalties of their Medicare reimbursements for medically unnecessary 30 day re-admission totalling an estimated $428 million. Hospitals will purchase RPM systems to avoid these costly readmissions which also involve non-payment for these unreimbursed inpatient hospital days.
Meanwhile, the new Chronic Care Management codes can generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new “top line” revenue to hospitals with employed primary care groups to subsidize the cost of the medical devices purchases and care platform implementations. Last year, 100,000 claims for this reimbursement were made to CMS and it is expected to grow substantially.
Financial incentives from all segments of the market including both health insurance companies and large self-funded employers are catalyzing development new available technology to save cost and provide better service, causing rapid adoption. There is a shift in the Medical Provider industry away from discounted fee-for-service payment methods to payments made based on outcomes and performance based provider compensation models.
Payors, employers, life and workers’ compensation carrier all support patient self-testing using home monitoring medical devices and remote transmission of medical data to providers in order to reduce or eliminate medically unnecessary hospitalizations, provider visits and improve worker productivity, while improving quality of life and longevity. This is a global market opportunity.
Market Growth Potential
By 2020, 81 million Americans are projected to have multiple chronic conditions. Treatment for these individuals represents nearly $1 Trillion in U.S. Medicare expenditures. By contrast, in England, with the largest public health system in the world, the NHS spends 75% of its £116.4 billion budget on Chronic Care Management.
In 1950, there were about 200 million people aged 60 years or more and the majority of deaths were from communicable diseases. Since then, the over 60 population has tripled to over 600 million and the main causes of death have shifted to non-infectious, chronic, diet/lifestyle induced and genetic diseases such as cardiovascular, metabolic diseases, and cancer.
The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that in the next 15 years, 75% of deaths will be due to these non-infectious, non-communicable diseases, many of which will be treatable by remote patient monitoring and early diagnosis. RPM will require monitoring of the most common vital signs including body temperature, heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure.
Source of both charts: Berg Insight
The U.S. and European Markets are clearly the largest targets for this growing market:
To learn more about the latest growth in remote health and home monitoring, visit: www.stevenrgerst.com.
Steven R. Gerst is Dean Emeritus of the Masters of Science in Applied Health Informatics and Professor, Bryan University. He is currently at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine in the Office of the Chief Innovation Officer and Vice Provost as an “Entrepreneur–in-Residence,” and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Dr. Gerst is a graduate of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (M.D.), Columbia College (B.A.), Columbia School of Public Health – Health Administration (M.P.H.) and the Goizuetta School of Business at Emory University (M.B.A.). He is a Diplomat in the American College of Healthcare Executives.