Up til now, insurance companies have been reluctant to get into the technology game where we have something that maybe can provide an option for our patients but their insurance company isn’t going to cover it and so they end up falling into the same-old, same-old whereas we could have a patient that could be safely and effectively managed much less expensively in the long term, but because of the upfront cost of putting in some kind of technological solution in the near-term, the insurance companies have bulked. That seems to be shifting according to this article I found over at medical news today.com, there is a shift and they’re starting to look at some monitoring technologies that will wirelessly let a monitoring center, physician’s office, a telenurisng program, hospital center, whatever the case may be, let them know about daily updates for for instance Congestive Heart Failure patients, COPD patients, patients that are at risk for being hospitalized with complications related to their medications, management of their disease.
Think about it, if we can monitor I’s and O’s remotely, we could catch an early weight gain that shows signs of Congestive Heart Failure exacerbation,. The benefit of that of course is we can adjust the patient’s diuretic medication, we can adjust the patient’s beta blockers and other cardiac meds and by doing that remotely by having a nurse- because it’ll be a nurse that calls, by having a nurse call in and verify the information, talk with the patient a little bit, get the assessment and then provide the update and information from their prescriber, we could give this patient an opportunity to not have a long-term hospital visit with all of the concurrent issues, risk for infection and other illnesses and expense and time away from home and all of those things that come into play when we have to hospitalize a patient. Managing this patient remotely, keeping them at home, keeping them from having and exacerbated situation occur is of course part of what nurses do and part of our focus on health management and return to optimal health and so I think that this is just right up nursing’s alley. This is what we do, it’s what we do really really well. So I’m looking forward to opportunities to do more of this. Imagine that at risk diabetes patient, that patient who for whatever reason is having difficulty managing their illness. If we could monitor their diabetes with them and catch some early shifts and some changes; maybe their diet is not where it needs to be, maybe they need some encouragement, all of these things can be done remotely and we provide this patient upfront care that staves off years of complications simply by making a quick phone call. So I’m looking forward to really having some of our insurers be more forward thinking about the uses of technology and actually reducing health care cost.
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This article has been featured in the news segment of the Nursing Show episode Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future Campaign and Episode 143
