How Telephonic Remote Patient Monitoring Makes a Real Difference

By Kyle Murphy, PhD

January 18, 2022 - Healthcare organizations are looking at a combination of technology and community partnerships to remove obstacles in the way of underserved populations from accessing and benefitting from high-quality healthcare services.

Audio-Only Remote Patient Monitoring Helping Black Patients

Remote patient monitoring programs that offer telephone-based, audio-only monitoring in addition to application-based programs may help reduce barriers to care, particularly for Black and low-income individuals, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Researchers from BJC Healthcare and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, implemented a remote patient monitoring program for COVID-19 patients. Upon enrollment, patients could choose between the app-based program or the telephone-based program. When given the option, a study found that Black patients with COVID-19 were more likely to choose a telephone-based remote patient monitoring program over an application-based modality.

More than 7,590 patients enrolled in both programs between April 4 and December 7, 2020. More than half (67 percent) of the patients were white, while 28 percent identified as Black. Black enrollees were also more likely to choose the telephone option than white enrollees — 68 percent versus 44 percent. Enrollees who lived in more disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to select the telephone method than enrollees in less disadvantaged neighborhoods — 59 percent versus 43 percent.

The telephone arm of the program had an overall retention rate of 70 percent, while the app arm had a retention rate of 54 percent. This suggests that the inclusion of a telephone arm may have helped make the program more accessible for patients, particularly Black patients. READ MORE

Johnson & Johnson Selects Microsoft to Advance Digital Surgery

Johnson & Johnson Medical Device Companies (JJMDC) recently tapped Microsoft to expand its secure and compliant digital surgery ecosystem. Microsoft Cloud will help JJDMC drive innovation that advances skills, improves workflow, and boosts surgical decisions to create a better patient experience and improve patient and economic outcomes.

As part of the collaboration, Microsoft will serve as JJMDC’s preferred cloud provider for its digital surgery solutions and help build out its digital surgery platform and internet of things (IoT) device connectivity. Specifically, the companies will leverage Microsoft Azure, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, data insights, edge computing, and IoT to improve the pace of JJMDC’s digital innovation across its digital surgery platform.

The collaboration will also help set the digital stage for Johnson & Johnson’s Ottava general surgery robot, which was delayed late last year. READ MORE

Pharmacists Key to Efforts to Address Social Determinants of Health

The Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) has issued a new resource guide to help pharmacists navigate certain social determinants of health that might crop up when a patient visits the pharmacy.

SDOH, or the social factors that affect a patient’s ability to achieve and maintain wellness, impact individuals across the healthcare continuum, including the pharmacy setting. And being that community pharmacists are among the healthcare providers with whom patients have the strongest relationships, they hold a lot of power in mitigating SDOH.

“PQA members are among the nation’s leaders in addressing SDOH barriers through innovative patient-focused approaches to care,” Micah Cost, PharmD, MS, PQA’s CEO, said in a statement. “This resource guide provides practical, real-world solutions to inform and support improvements in addressing health disparities and delivering more equitable care and outcomes across the continuum of care.” READ MORE

Direct Contracting Under Fire from Scores of Federal Lawmakers

More than 50 lawmakers led by US Representative Pramila Jayapa urged the Biden administration to discontinue the Medicare Direct Contracting (DC) program and transition Medicare beneficiaries into the Traditional Medicare model.

In a letter written to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the lawmakers stated the DC program is a Trump-era privatization tactic. Under the current DC program, private payers and other for-profit companies are authorized to “manage” care for seniors enrolled in Traditional Medicare. The DC pilot phase enrolled 30 million Traditional Medicare beneficiaries across 38 states without their approval, they added.

Medicare offers Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs), typically privately-owned and controlled coverage networks, monthly payments to cover beneficiaries’ healthcare expenses. In addition, DCEs can profit off any funds left over after costs are paid. The lawmakers indicate that this practice is “a dangerous financial incentive to restrict and ration seniors’ care. READ MORE

CHIP Coverage Could Be the Key to Improving Immigrant Prenatal Care

According to a report from Manatt Health, by implementing the CHIP coverage option for immigrants and their children, policymakers can help reduce maternal and infant mortality and ensure that pregnant individuals receive adequate prenatal care regardless of their immigration statuses.

The CHIP coverage option provides prenatal and postpartum care to immigrants and their children, regardless of their immigration status or Medicaid eligibility. Unfortunately, only around one-third of states offer the CHIP coverage option for immigrants as of January 2021, leaving more than 60 percent of states to pursue this path to improve care for pregnant immigrants and their children.

Past studies have shown that the CHIP coverage option for immigrants and their children led to increased prenatal care utilization. The program has the potential to help states improve access to care and the quality of prenatal care for pregnant immigrants, the report concluded. READ MORE

Artificial Intelligence Catches Cancerous Lesions in Mammograms

Duke University researchers have created an artificial intelligence platform to analyze potentially cancerous lesions in mammography scans and determine whether patients should receive invasive biopsies.

Unlike previous tools of its kind, the platform’s algorithm is interpretable, allowing physicians to see how the program came to its conclusions. The research team trained the AI to detect and evaluate lesions like an actual radiologist trained, rather than allowing it to freely develop its procedures. The AI program could be a useful training platform to teach students how to read mammography images. Additionally, it could assist physicians in sparsely populated regions worldwide that do not regularly read mammography scans to make health care decisions.

The team first programmed the AI to detect suspicious lesions, ignoring healthy tissue and other irrelevant data. They then hired radiologists to carefully label the images to teach the AI to focus on the edges of the lesion and where potential tumors meet healthy tissue to compare those edges to those in images with known cancerous and benign outcomes. According to researchers, radiating lines, known medically as mass margins, are the best predictor of cancerous breast tumors and are the first thing radiologists look for. READ MORE

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