Pharos Innovations, a provider of healthcare technologies, has developed a remote patient monitoring solution so called ‘
Tel-Assurance’, which is a modular approach to chronic health care management that focuses on prevention, wellness and disease management by leveraging simple communication and healthcare technologies already available.
Randy Williams, MD, CEO of Pharos Innovations, said, "a short list of chronic conditions constitutes over 95 percent of Medicare and over 80 percent of Medicaid costs. We believe that perhaps as much as 40 percent of these costs would be avoidable through better care coordination and collaboration, supported with appropriate healthcare technologies and payment incentives."
Tel-Assurance from Pharos Innovations is one such chronic care management technology that improves care co-ordination and cost savings by remotely monitoring patients and averting unnecessary clinical events, said the company.
According to Pharos, its Tel-Assurance is a platform to monitor patient’s health condition on a daily basis via a simple survey. Each morning, the patient is required to call a toll-free number and then answer a few questions or a brief survey about the health condition on that day. The patient is required to enter a few enquiries such as weight and then listen to a message about self-care. If the survey answers indicate a problem then an alert is sent to the hospital staff and in turn the staff informs the patient's principal physician for further medical procedures.
Successful for over twelve years, Tel-Assurance has facilitated Medicare, Medicaid and commercial patients and their physicians to attain high levels of clinical and financial performance improvement. This platform makes use of common technologies such as cell phone, landline or Internet connection and basic measurement tools such as a bathroom scale, thereby making it cost-effective.
According to Pharos, its Tel-Assurance is the most extensively studied remote patient monitoring technology. It makes use of enabling technologies that proactively involve patients in their care, thereby helping in early identification of clinical deterioration.
Pharos says that the Tel-Assurance technology proved that by collaborating with physicians and engaging patients in their care via simple, easy-to-use healthcare technologies, considerably improved clinical performance at remarkable cost savings that are sustainable and reproducible between organizations.
Results from Medicare demonstration indicates that by using Tel-Assurance, hospital readmissions for all causes fell from 20 percent to two percent. In addition, at least one averted hospital admission per individual enrolled per year and nearly $6,500 per individual saved annually. The results also indicate that Medicare savings of over $8 Million annually were reported - from two hospital systems.
Tel-Assurance was selected for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored evaluation of remote monitoring interventions. Its success has been evaluated in several Medicare and Medicaid population demonstrations, by the Veterans Administration. It is also the recipient of the prestigious American Heart Association National Outcomes award.
Jayashree Adkoli is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Jayashree's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jessica Kostek
