Addressing Patient Adoption for Digital Health

MDLife – June 2021

By Jorge Rodriguez, Vice President

Patient adoption can be a challenge with digital health. It has been a concern for years in healthcare with new medications and therapies. When patient portals were introduced, their adoption was slow, and the technology caused issues for many patients. Now with telemedicine, it’s déjà vu all over again. So, with digital health impacting healthcare even more, how do providers address adoption?

Adoption of digital health solutions really ramped up as a result of COVID-19. The pandemic and the resulting healthcare delivery issues saw digital health become a necessity. Rock Health and the Stanford Center for Digital Health recently released its Digital Health Consumer Adoption Report, a study of 7,900 consumers conducted September and October last year.

According to the report, digital health tracking tools saw the biggest growth in 2020, rising to 54 percent from 42 percent the prior year. Adoption rates grew significantly—10+ percentage point increases—across live video telemedicine, wearable ownership, and digital health metric tracking. The most likely users of telemedicine in 2020 remained consistent with past years: higher-income earners, middle-aged adults (aged 35-54), highly educated, and importantly, those with chronic conditions. As the report states, the 2020 data suggest that the pandemic acted more to reinforce and accelerate underlying trends rather than to draw in new consumer subgroups as telemedicine users. That being said, it is good to see the recent increase in federal relief funding geared towards facilities that provide care to patients impacted by socioeconomic health determinants. Programs like the American Rescue Plan, the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, and the Optimize Virtual Care Program are now available to bring the latest technology to all patients, regardless of their ability to pay for the service.

Remote Patient Monitoring and Patient Adoption

Availability of the latest technology and adoption remain independent variables to successfully incorporating a remote patient monitoring program that can impact a patient’s life. The key to success with remote patient monitoring (RPM) is patient adoption through consistent patient engagement leading to long-term adherence. At

WITHmyDOC, we understand how important it is to for patients to become comfortable with the new technology and the ease of use early on.

Our RPM@Home™ System delivers better outcomes through greater adoption rates and long-term adherence. Our PEPsquad (Patient Engagement Professionals), provide training to ensure confidence, knowledge, and ease of use. They work with patients in their home to introduce RPM and follow-up to assure understanding not only on how to use the equipment itself, but on the importance of consistent transmission of their physiological data to the care team for monitoring. Additionally, our MedSquad, RN patient specialists are available if a full-service clinical monitoring program is preferred and provides a valuable benefit by easing the burden on your physicians and medical staff.

This is not meant to replace traditional office visits. Its purpose is to provide more data to physicians to help guide their decision-making, increasing proactive intervention to reduce costly ER visits that are a financial burden on our health system.

Consistent transmission is also important to meet the 16 days of vitals electronic transmission required by CMS for a provider to be able to bill for services. Using artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, this end-to-end, web-based intelligence system is designed for success.

At WITHmyDOC, our patient adoption philosophy is focused on maximizing the adoption of RPM by patients and removing any barrier to utilization.

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