7 Ways Chronic Care Management Improves Hospitals & Clinics ROI

Hospitals that don’t make money often end up shut down. While care quality is important, clinics and hospitals that aren’t profitable have no future. To ensure that isn’t the case, chronic care management solutions like virtual care and remote patient monitoring services are necessary to keep facilities in the green. Here’s how they help improve ROI for hospitals and clinics. 

• Chronic management paves the way for RPM reimbursements

Facilities can offer chronic care management through remote patient monitoring technology such as that which leading providers Aura Health provides. Here’s the financial potential of RPM reimbursements for facilities of all kinds:

• $21 for patient education and set up of the technology
• $56 for 30-day monitoring and daily recordings
• $53/$42 for additional patient monitoring

You can get the complete breakdown of Medicare reimbursements from Aura website’s page, under Resources. Be sure to pay them a visit to find just how your clinic or hospital stands to gain from using these technologies in your chronic care management process. 

• Fewer physician visitation costs with the right technology 

Chronic care management traditionally attracts regular physician and patient appointments. For critically ill patients, physicians often have to meet them at their residences, which can be costly as facilities have to fork out allowances for doctors and also meet travel expenses, among other costs. 

However, leveraging virtual care solutions in chronic care management can reduce these costs greatly. Physicians can easily follow up with patients regarding their condition and vitals remotely without having to meet them in person. In the end, this means doctors travel less, and thus hospitals also spend less as a whole. 

• Improved clinical staff productivity that increases profitability 

Many factors shape the course of a facility’s ROI. Another critical part of the equation upon which ROI also depends is employee productivity. Chronic care management can be tedious work that causes burnout. But with virtual care solutions, clinical employee output improves leading to a better bottom line due to: 

• Decreased staff turnover which lowers rehiring costs for clinics and hospitals
• Lowered rates of absenteeism and thus facilities maximize their work hours
• Enhanced patient satisfaction levels, which leads to more referrals and new business

• Better patient engagement and satisfaction 

ROI for clinics and hospitals isn’t always a monetary metric. Patient engagement and satisfaction is also another critical ROI indicator. Chronic care management, with the intervention of RPM and virtual care solutions, can bolster patient-physician relationships by allowing patients to seek on-demand clarification and stay connected with their caregivers.

Thanks to a combination of audio and video technology involved in modern chronic care management solutions, there’s better coordination of care, improved health outcomes, and better engagement/satisfaction. In the end, this increases a facility’s brand standing and referral appeal. 

• Fewer readmissions rates and thus a healthier bottom line

Lowering readmission rates has obvious benefits for patients but it can also have positive impacts on ROI for care facilities as well.  For instance, let’s consider the financial repercussions of rehospitalization to put this into perspective: 

• High readmission leads to low patient satisfaction which increases patient turnover
• Rehospitalization piles workload burdens on healthcare staff and thus curtails productivity 
• Readmissions can attract expensive lawsuits

As you can see, hospitals and clinics have much to gain from improving chronic care management to lower readmissions, and modern technology like RPM and virtual care are the solutions. 

• Pay-as-you-use profitable model when outsourced

Often, care facilities have to bring in specialists to help with chronic care management, especially when it comes to cardiology care. This can mean adding clinical staff to a payment payroll when their services are only needed intermittently. 

Modern chronic care management solutions can again help hospitals and clinics dodge this financial bullet. RPM and virtual care solution providers like Aura Health provide these specialists and expertise on a per-use basis, which makes more financial sense and enhances ROI. 

• Virtual chronic care management can expand market base

More so for patients living in rural areas or remote locations, access to proper chronic care can be a huge headache. This also translates to an ROI problem for facilities, as they are unable to serve patients in certain geographical zones. 

However, telehealth chronic care management presents an opportunity for facilities to reach these types of consumers, and thus widen their market reach. On top of that, it also allows facilities to run beyond their occupancy, reserving admissions for high-risk cases while others are tended to remotely. 

Conclusion

Chronic care management paves the way for RPM and virtual care technologies that tremendously increase ROI even beyond the financial perspective. RPM programs alone have been shown to improve cost savings for clinics and facilities annually by over $8,375 per patient. So imagine the financial reprieve on a single facility’s bottom line when this benefit is magnified by its total patient base. If you’d like to improve your facility’s ROI, be sure to visit the Aura Health website for more details.