Remote Patient Monitoring

Introduction

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) refers to the use of technology enabled digital devices such as mobile phones and computers to keep track of patients and to administer post-diagnosis health care services outside the conventional healthcare setting (Vegesna, Tran, Angelaccio, & Arcona, 2017). It entails the use of digital technologies in the collection of medical and health-related information of patients and relays the information to care providers. The incorporation of the remote patient monitoring plays a vital role in the improving patient’s outcome because it promotes patients’ independence, minimizes complications related to treatment plans, and reduces cost. Besides, remote patient monitoring takes healthcare service delivery to the home of the patient, and hence, the patients get sufficient support from the care provider and family members. This paper is going to examine the impacts of nurse managers’ adoption of remote patient monitoring in the healthcare sector.

The Rationale for Choosing the Topic

The major role of nurse managers is to recruit and retain the nursing staff, oversee the activities of the nurses within a given health facility. However, the elimination of boundaries and the increased collaboration among nurse managers and nurses who deal directly with the patients. Nurse Managers facilitates the delivery of healthcare services by collaborating and managing the nurses who take care of patients. They also help patients and their families in implementing the treatment plan (Jacoby, 2017). Despite this, the role of nurse managers has been limited by numerous challenges such as the distance barrier between them and patients and the human resource tasks that they deal with. As a result, they lack sufficient information for use in quality service delivery. In this regard, the adoption of remote patient monitoring will help nurse managers collect health and medical information of patients and access them remotely for the use in high-quality service delivery.

How It Will Impact Practice in a Positive or Negative Manner

Pros of Remote Patient Monitoring

One of the advantages of remote patient monitoring is that it increases the access to health care services by patients (Jacoby, 2017). Through the use of the new mobile digital devices, nurse managers and other care providers can reach out to a wider and a heterogeneous population of healthcare consumers who would not be able to gain access to the physical health care facilities due to factors such as distance barrier. In this regard, more patients who have the digital devices can easily gain access to health care services.

Another advantage that is associated with the implementation of remote patient monitoring among care providers if the reduced time and cost of accessing health care services (Vegesna, Tran, Angelaccio, & Arcona, 2017). This is due to the fact that the patients do not have to travel to the health care facilities for doctor consultation, lab tests, or for prescriptions. Besides, it saves time as doctors and patients do not have to physically meet their patients

Remote patient monitoring also helps in the early and timely detection of diseases and the deterioration of patients’ conditions (Jacoby, 2017). The use of new mobile digital devices in remote patient monitoring enables a real-time delivery of medical and health-related information to nurse managers who can then collaborate effectively in the designing of the appropriate treatment plan for patients based on the information received.  Through remote monitoring devices, nurse managers and care providers can analyze the condition of patients to determine deterioration or improvements from a remote location. For example, care providers have successfully utilized remote patient monitoring among patients with chronic illnesses such diabetes, heart diseases, and cancer (Mohammadzadeh & Safdari, 2014).

Cons of Remote Patient Monitoring

One of the major disadvantages that are associated with the implementation of remote patient monitoring is the insecurity of patients’ sensitive information (Vegesna, Tran, Angelaccio, & Arcona, 2017). In remote patient monitoring, information regarding patients’ conditions are stored in digital devices, and hence, they are vulnerable to unauthorized access from hackers. This jeopardizes the right to privacy of patients which is a critical element of the healthcare practice.

The use of remote tools in the diagnosis and prescription reduces the interaction between patients and care providers (McAndrew, Napolitano, Pogach, Quigley, Shantz, Vander, & Foster, 2013). This creates room for risks and errors associated with clinical service delivery the inexperienced care providers.

Remote patient monitoring is vulnerable to networks issues and challenges, for example, during low internet speed, the delivery of healthcare services can be hindered, and this puts the life of patients at risk.

Another disadvantage of remote patient monitoring is the inability to provide immediate treatment to patients who may need injections or admissions. Besides, when there is a poor quality of health informatics such as X-rays are kept, care providers can give faulty treatment.

How Informatics Skills and Knowledge Were Used in the Process Relevance to Developing the Assignment

In the preparation of this assignment, is used informatics knowledge of customer and personal service to identify the current needs and challenges hindering care providers from meeting these needs. Therefore, I used critical analysis skills to assess and evaluate the needs of patients in the present day technology savvy society, for example, timely and less costly access to health care services. As a result, I identified the topic of remote patient monitoring because it will help in filling these gaps. Finally, I utilized effective skills of internet searching such as Boolean search techniques to combine key words within my chosen topic to refine my search process and to get accurate and reliable information for use in this assignment.

Conclusion

In summary, remote patient monitoring will help care providers to provide high-quality healthcare care services to in a timely manner to patients. Another advantage of the use of remote patient monitoring is the enhanced diagnosis of patients and drug prescriptions by nurse managers and other care providers. However, remote monitoring has several disadvantages such as reduced interaction between patients and care providers and this may promote clinical errors.

Recommendation

• All care providers should be trained in remote patient monitoring to eliminate clinical errors.
• Remote patient monitoring should be implemented alongside physical visit to health care facilities to promote patient outcome.