Reducing Hospitalizations with RPM at Kidney Disease Consultants

Kidney Disease Consultants (KDC) provides high-quality, personalized, kidney care in the Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati areas. KDC knew remote patient monitoring (RPM) could potentially further its mission of providing individualized, preventative care. As it turns out, RPM did exactly that.

From Reactive to Proactive Care

When Melonie Brinkley, practice manager at KDC, was researching RPM solutions, she already knew which patients would benefit from real-time, daily monitoring. “Chronic conditions are so prevalent with our nephrology patients, like diabetes, high blood pressure or volume [weight] issues, and we didn’t like the idea of only seeing our hypertensive patients every few months,” she said. “Care-based programs like remote patient monitoring are the future.”

Why They Chose Optimize Health

Melanie chose Optimize Health because of the availability of data by condition, date, and clinical urgency, as well as how easily the devices integrate into the platform. They also understood that choosing the right devices for their patient population would make a difference with patient engagement. They chose cellular devices because they would be easier for their patients to use.

The Results

Since they launched RPM, Dr. Deepak Mittal, MD CEO and President of KDC, said “Our hypertensive patients have had less hospitalizations, less progression of renal disease, and less cardiac mortality. Remote patient monitoring is effectively reducing the creatinine value and reducing the progression of chronic kidney disease. I’m amazed at the results.”

Their results^* include:

• Enrolled 100 patients in the first month
• 200% program growth in two months
• 30% decrease in hospitalizations
• 90% of patients taking readings as recommended by their provider
  
  

Strong Patient Engagement and Adherence

KDC is excited to see not just the benefits for their care team, but also the level of engagement from their patients. “Not only were our patients interested, but they were actually taking more readings than when they were using paper because they like knowing they’re improving, so patient adherence hasn’t been a problem for us.”

In addition to positive clinical outcomes, the practice has experienced a positive financial return on investment through applicable CPT^® codes.

With hypertension monitoring proving to be such a great success, the practice is planning to add glucose monitoring and weight scales to their RPM program. “Remote patient monitoring allows for good quality care because we’re no longer treating things in isolation, but providing care toward their entire well-being,” Melanie says.

Download the complete Kidney Disease Consultants case study or learn more about the clinical research that supports the use of RPM for hypertensive patients.

Ready to be the next RPM Success Story?

If you want to talk to an RPM expert about how your practice could improve patient outcomes and satisfaction with RPM, schedule a free consultation.

*DISCLAIMER: These results were specific to KDC. Optimize Health does not guarantee the results clients may achieve through an RPM program.