With home care agency telehealth adoption estimated at 17%, perhaps GE and Intel are onto something. Stories of telehealth usage by healthcare consumers have been popping up in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other outlets outside the world of healthcare journals, laying the groundwork for planting the idea of remote monitoring into the public consciousness.
Glance at the next few stories, summaries actually, with links to further detail if you want to look into it more deeply, to see if you detect the trend. Telehealth systems developers and device manufacturers need to sell systems in order to thrive. For the most part, home health care is not buying a lot of telehealth systems. Therefore, vendors look to other places to increase sales.
Eventually, remote patient monitoring will not be strongly associated with home health care at all. Instead, the technology will be seen as a commodity to be purchased at Walgreen’s or Ace Hardware —when it is device-related at all — and the public will find it quaint that a few home care agencies also offer the devices along with their monitoring services, just as their hospitals and physicians do.
Systems for adults wanting to monitor parents’ activities
Keeping track of daily activities of an elderly parent living alone is now possible no matter where their adult children live. More and more companies are introducing new technologies that allow remote Internet monitoring of parents’ lives to keep tabs on their health, according to a July 28 story in the Home & Garden section of the New York Times.
The products aim to provide enough supervision for elderly individuals so that they can remain in their homes instead of moving to assisted-living facilities or nursing homes.
One new entry, GrandCare, uses movement sensors, much like those used in security systems, strategically placed throughout a parent’s home. The sensors track the opening of doors, the time at which the parent gets out of bed and movement through certain rooms.
Information is transmitted to the adult children via e-mail, text message and voicemail.
Another program, called MedMinder, functions as a remote monitoring device for medications. The system alerts a patient with flashes and beeps when a pill needs to be taken and alerts relatives via phone or e-mail if medication is not taken at the correct time.
Selling telehealth to the public
Not content with only one human interest story, the New York Times also ran a detailed description of some of the telehealth and other monitoring devices that are becoming available to the consumer. Mentioned were the Philips Medication Dispensing Service and Lifeline PERS, Ideal Life’s wireless CHF and diabetes monitors, the ActiveCare Personal Assistance Link and MobileHelp. The latter two are GPS-enabled cell phone systems for people with chronic conditions who are not homebound.
Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal ran a story on July 27 entitled “The Do-It-Yourself House Call,” which opened with, “Technology that aims to keep congestive heart failure patients out of the hospital is gaining traction.”
The story mentioned home telehealth pilot projects by WellPoint’s Anthem unit in California, Humana’s video telehealth program due to start in January, and Aetna’s clinical trial with Intel designed to learn what home care providers already know, whether remote vital sign monitoring can reduce unnecessary hospitalization for heart patients.
What both the Times and WSJ have in common is that the words “home health care” never appear in their articles. Summarizing the importance of telehealth systems, the Journal runs a quote. “The relationship between the consumer and doctor is primary,” said Sam Meckey, chief operating officer for disease solutions at UnitedHealth’s OptumHealth unit.
Systems for insurance companies wanting to pay for preventative care
HIP Health Plan of New York (HIP), an EmblemHealth company, has received state approval to underwrite the cost of providing a Nurse Care Manager to plan members in an effort to “assist frail, elderly and disabled individuals so that they can remain in their homes for as long as possible.”
Once in place, the nurse will be able to assign non-medical caregivers to provide personal care, help with chores, housekeeping and cooking, home and adult-day health care, social day care and delivered meals. The care manager will also be able to install a Personal Emergency Response Systems (PERS) for the insured person.
To be known as the HIP VIP Dual Eligible (HMO) Medicaid Advantage Plus-Managed Long-Term Care (MLTC) plan, the Medicare Advantage produce will be available to
dual eligible Medicare and Medicaid individuals at no additional cost. The MLTC program will be offered in all five boroughs of New York City, as well as Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
December 11th, 2011 at 11:58 am
[...] such programs with promising results but they have yet to take those pilots to scale. And while home health agencies have also experimented (and occasionally implemented) programs for two-way video conversations, for [...]