The Need for Technology-Enhanced Care Coordination

The cost of health care is steadily rising. Gaps in care for complex chronic conditions, such as heart failure, diabetes and chronic airway diseases like asthma and COPD continue to plague our nation. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the medical care costs of individuals with chronic conditions account for more than 75% of our nation’s $2 trillion medical care costs.

Much of these exorbitant health care costs are avoidable. Yet, current management of these complex chronic conditions suffers from a lack of adequate care coordination, timely symptom recognition and poor patient adherence to medications and treatment plans. This ineffective chronic condition management results in increased hospital and ER admissions and re-admissionsischarge. Recent reports have shown that patients with complex health needs are being discharged from hospitals earlier, in part due to pressures on hospitals to reduce average lengths of stay because of the continued growth of DRG (diagnosis related groups) and capitated reimbursement for inpatient care. Given this motivation for early and possibly premature discharge, it is no surprise that our country’s hospital readmission rates are increasing as well and playing a significant role in the cost increase.

The Opportunity

Studies show the value of integrated health management programs in improving care coordination, quality and outcomes while reducing costs and other expenditures. Recent data goes even further to show the additional value received when organizations integrate remote patient monitoring into health management programs. In June, 2008, the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine published estimates that remote monitoring could cut national costs of heart failure alone nearly in half from $8 billion a year to $4.2 billion.