EHR-integrated Remote Monitoring of Hypertension: A Pilot Study in Primary Care

"What we really wanted to do was to put into practice what Medicare has made available as a new paid service, which is remote physiological monitoring, or remote patient monitoring (RPM)," said Steve Persell, MD, MPH in a recent interview. "We wanted to apply that to hypertension in the primary care setting."

Persell talked with Patient Care about a pilot study he led that integrated the Omron VitalSight^TM RPM with electronic health records (EHR) in 2 primary care practices to assess its use in transmitting blood pressure readings directly to the clinicians' EHR inbox and subsequent effects on hypertension management. The results were presented at the American Hear Association Scientific Sessions 2021.

Persell describes the study's findings as well as what he sees as the challenges to scaling remote monitoring effectively, a process that will likely involve restructuring insurance templates, office workflows, and patient expectations. He, for one, has already started his part.

Stephen D Persell, MD, MHP is professor of medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the Center for Primary Care Innovation at Northwestern Medicine.

Persell S, Anthony L, Peprah Y, et al. A pilot study of remote patient monitoring for hypertension in primary care. Abstract presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2021, held virtually, November 13-15, 2021.