2023 Remote Patient Monitoring Summit & Technology Showcase

7:15am – 8:00am
Conference Registration & Networking Breakfast 

8:00am – 8:15am
Chairperson’s Opening Remarks 

8:15am – 9:00am
Utilizing Remote Monitoring For Chronic Disease Management
Johns Hopkins Care at Home began a remote patient monitoring program in 2011. As an early adopter of remote monitoring, Johns Hopkins is now evolving the program to target patients discharged from its hospitals in order to prevent readmissions and close transitional care gaps. Through a project focused on chronic heart failure (CHF), the program has deployed best practice tools for patients to improve self-management for chronic diseases and developed best practices to help partners identify and refer patients to the program. The presentation will share lessons learned from this project along with Johns Hopkins Medicine’s framework on remote patient monitoring and the opportunities and challenges that exist today within the industry to grow and scale these new modalities of care.

Rachel DeSantis, MHA
Senior Director, Home Based Medical Services
Johns Hopkins Medicine 

Melissa Lantz-Garnish, RN, BSN
Senior Director, Home Medical Services, Johns Hopkins Care at Home
Johns Hopkins Medicine 

9:00am – 9:45am
Transitioning From a Passive to an Active Remote Patient Monitoring Program and the Benefits of Doing So!
Many RPM programs are embedded in home health services but to truly harness the full benefits of RPM on a system level it needs to become its own department. In building such a department it enables you to bill for services, become an “active management shop,” provide longitudinal care even once home health services have expired, and drive better outcomes on a system level. If you want to learn more about the benefits of this approach please attend our talk on the lessons learned from one of the country’s largest governmental non-profits systems approach to RPM in the state of Florida.  This session will discuss how to build a virtual health department to house RPM (who, what where, when and why).  Attendees will learn how Lee health approaches billing for services, how Lee Health enroll patients using EMR based risk tools for special populations (CHF, COPD, Sepsis), and what outcomes this approach has produced in quality, readmission etc.

Zsolt Kulcsar DO, MPH, MBA
Medical Director, Lee Virtual Health
Lee Health 

9:45am – 10:15am
Networking & Refreshments Break 

10:15am – 11:00am
Creating a Digital Engagement Platform to Reduce Costs and Improve Care
To deliver on our bold vision of creating the world’s healthiest generations of children, we are building an integrated digital engagement platform to drive use of digital tools that empower patients and clinicians. We work with clinicians to create state-of-the art consumer and patient digital experiences that are effective, equitable, reduce expense and achieve the best outcomes for patients.  This presentation will cover how Nemours Children’s Health has built virtual care programs for acute and chronic conditions across the continuum of care, including the use of an automated chatbot.  By developing our own code and leveraging human-centered design thinking, we are integrating legacy one-point applications and custom features into a seamless digital environment in which patient-families can truly manage their health care.

Carey Officer
Vice President, Service Delivery Innovation, Center for Health Delivery Innovation
Nemours Children's Health

11:00am – 11:45am
Emerging Compliance and Diligence Considerations for Decentralized Trials
Particularly with the end of the federal Public Health Emergency, decentralized trials continue to grow despite regulatory uncertainty.  This session focuses on emerging regulatory considerations for use of telehealth and decentralized trials in human subjects research that industry stakeholders, including sponsors, CROs, sites, IT development platforms, and private equity and VC should consider to identify strategic partnerships and investment opportunities, including:  Principal Investigator Licensure/Waivers; DEA/Pharmacy Requirements; Anti-Kickback Compliance; Evolving Informed Consent Standards; and New FDA expectations.  This session will also provide opportunity for discussion of compliance safeguards and best practices to mitigate applicable enforcement risk.

Devin A. Cohen
Partner
Ropes & Gray 

11:45am – 12:30pm
Maximizing Patient Care Through RPM and Hospitals At Home
The presentation will cover the implementation of a successful remote patient monitoring program that utilizes technology interface with clinical intervention to improve clinical outcomes, including reduced emergency department utilization and hospital admissions. The program also improved chronic disease management for conditions such as hypertension and diabetes. The presentation will also include information on Hospital at Home operations, clinical processes, outcomes, and the current landscape and future direction of at-home services.

Vipul Bhatia, MD, MBA
Associate Chief Medical Officer, Post-acute and Continuing Care Services
Wellspan Health 

12:30 – 1:30pm
Lunch 

1:30pm – 2:15pm
Collaborative Care within Primary Care Clinics:  Utilizing Psychiatry Expertise

Depression is a leading reason for primary care visits and often the initial opportunity to address this potentially disabling health condition.  Primary care providers (PCP’s) face a high burden in arranging specialty care for behavioral health conditions as demand is outpaced by limited resources and historically poor access.  This creates an increased need for enhanced psychiatric expertise in managing these mental health comorbidities in primary care clinics.  The Rush Collaborative Care Program expands patient access to mental health services through a team-based approach to depression screening and intervention.  This outcome-driven and scalable approach substantially increases systemwide behavioral health offerings despite long-standing challenges around access to counseling and specialty services.  By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to describe how a Collaborative Care program is implemented and structured, criteria guidelines for appropriate patient referrals, typical interventions available within Collaborative Care, and patient and cost efficiency outcomes with the use of this intervention 

M. J. Byrne, MD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Medical Director | Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Clinic
Psychiatric Consultant | Integrated Behavioral Health – Collaborative Care
Rush University Medical Center 

2:15pm – 3:15pm
Panel Discussion:  Best Practices for Structuring and Implementing A Successful RPM Program

 Ellen McAndrews Guth, MSN, APRN, CPNP-PC
Nurse Practitioner, Quality Improvement
Bower Lyman Center for Medically Complex Children
University of Florida College of Medicine Jacksonville 

Nina J. Solenski, M.D.
Professor of Neurology, Stroke Division
Medical Director UVA Telestroke
Division Head Teleneurology
University of Virginia Health 

Sos Mboijana, MD
Assistant Chief Medical Information Officer
Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group
Kaiser Permanente  

Deidre Rolli, BSN, RN
Clinical Consultant
Current Health from Best Buy Health

3:15pm – 3:45pm
Networking & Refreshments Break 

3:45pm – 4:30pm
Expanding Access to Critical Care For Rural Hospitals Utilizing RPM
Many rural communities desire the development of a top-tier intensive care unit (ICU) at their local hospital to deliver the highest level of care for their patient population and to comply with Leap Frog guidelines. Unfortunately, the specialist physicians and nurses needed to provide this care are often unavailable or prohibitively expensive for rural communities to attract and retain. This has become even more apparent in the presence of the pandemic. Therefore, rural hospitals may choose to offer lower levels of ICU coverage than desired or discontinue the service altogether. Recent advances in healthcare technology have made it possible to remotely monitor patients in intensive care settings with a level of intensity and focus that often exceeds what can be delivered in those local inpatient settings. With the use of real time analytics and audio/video tools, a remote tele-ICU program is able to significantly enhance patient outcomes in any ICU setting, making it possible for rural hospitals to connect their existing physician and nurse resources to experienced critical care specialists, on a “real time” basis, anywhere in the world.  This type of care delivery allows rural hospitals to keep high acuity patients and generate revenue, while also ensuring the patients are cared for in their local community with the support of their families.

Cheryl Hiddleson MSN, RN, FCCM, CENP, CCRN-E
EHC Director eICU Operations
Adjunct Faculty Biomedical Informatics
Emory University School of Medicine 

4:30pm – 5:15pm
Leveraging Remote Patient Monitoring to Address CHF
Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) is a chronic disease affecting over 6.2 million patients, accounts for over 379,000 mortalities in the United States alone and is a leading cause of increased healthcare utilization and cost. Guideline-Directed Medical Therapy (GDMT), an approach leveraging four distinct classes of medications, has been associated with reducing hospitalization and mortality rates among CHF patients, but adoption is poor nationally. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) may be a promising tool to assist in transitioning CHF patients’ home, but current literature is mixed on its impact. This talk discusses an RPM based quality improvement initiative to decrease hospital readmission among CHF patients with a focus on optimization of GDMT, through a Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) framework.

Farrukh Jafri, MD
Medical Director WPH Cares
White Plains Hospital 

5:15pm – 6:00pm
RPM 101
Starting a remote patient monitoring program has many ups and downs and in most cases should be an iterative process.  In this talk we will go over the lessons learned over the last 6 years, of implementing remote patient monitoring at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  Things to be covered will be vendor features including not needed, nice to have, and must haves. How do you structure your RPM program.  How do you choose alert values in the absence of meaningful data. And finally, how do you scale this impactful clinical program.

Eric Wallace, MD, FASN
Professor of Medicine
UAB eMedicine, Medical Director
Co-Director of Home Dialysis
Director Rare Genetic Kidney Disease Clinic
Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham 

End of Day One

7:15am – 8:00am
Networking Breakfast 

8:00am – 8:15am
Chairperson’s Recap

8:15am – 9:00am
Remote Monitoring and AI in Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care

Despite improvements in care, cardiac arrest is more common in children with critical disease,
and common ICU workflows and technology are associated with a high prevalence of alarm
fatigue as well as missing potentially concerning events, with relatively modest improvement
over the last decades. A Tele-ICU can support busy bedside teams taking care of critically ill
children, providing virtual surveillance enhanced by AI tools trained for early detection of
trends as well as improving survival and quality of life for critically ill patients. We share our
experience with virtual surveillance provided from a pediatric Tele Critical Care Command
Center supporting the care of children with critical heart disease. 

Ricardo A. Munoz, MD, FAAP, FCCM, FACC
Professor of Pediatrics
The George Washington University School of Medicine
Chief, Division of Cardiac Critical Care Medicine
Executive Director, Telemedicine
Endowed Chair of MacCutcheon Family
Co-director
Children’s National Heart Institute
Children's National Hospital

9:00am – 9:45am
Utilizing Remote Patient Monitoring in the Complex Care and NICU Pediatric Patient Populations
This session will explore strategies designed to advance patient outcomes while addressing Health Equity and Interoperability in the pediatric population.  Participants will be able to:

• Identify strategies to advance health outcomes in the pediatric population.
• Create metrics to evaluate program success.
• Build relationships with payor groups to help support the sustainability of their RPM program.

Tamara Perry, MA-IOC
Senior Director Operations
Virtual Health and Innovation 

9:45am – 10:15am
Networking & Refreshments Break 

10:15am – 11:00am
Looking For Patients in All the Wrong Places: Using the EHR And AI To Identify Hospital at Home Patients
Identifying and prioritizing hospital at home patients continues to challenge healthcare institutions. Burdensome manual chart reviews have been the main strategy for many programs. Discover how leveraging the EHR saves time and improves team communication and clinician satisfaction. Learn how one program developed a predictive model to assist with selection and prioritization of home hospital patients. Potential pitfalls of artificial intelligence as it relates to DEI will also be highlighted.

Margaret Paulson, DO, FACP
NWWI Medical Director – Advanced Care at Home & Home Health
Mayo Clinic Health System 

11:00am – 11:45am
Regulatory/Reimbursement Issues Surrounding RPM in Texas
In this session, Nora Belcher, CEO of the Texas e-Health Alliance, will review recent legislative activity related to RPM, discuss how RPM issues are perceived by state legislators and regulators, and provide attendees with insights on how this benefit will continue to evolve as part of the Texas ecosystem.   The attendees will learn which new laws have passed, become more aware of how various legislators perceive these issues, and understand how those changes can positively impact patient care. 

Nora Belcher
Chief Executive Officer
Texas E-Health Alliance 

11:45am – 12:30pm
Remote Patient Monitoring for Substance Use Disorders- Increasing Access and Supports While Managing Risk
This presentation will address both the opportunities and challenges of providing services and remote patient monitoring for substance use disorder patients. Telehealth lessons learned during and post pandemic for a large SUD agency will be shared including telehealth platforms, integration in the electronic health record and both telephonic and video support for a high risk and underserved population. Considerations for when a patient is better served with in person or hybrid services and ways to monitor for risk and increase engagement for SUD patients will be discussed. Lastly, new opportunities and experience for utilizing digital therapeutics with SUD patients will be shared from the provider perspective.

Lisa Blanchard, MA, LMHC
Chief Clinical Officer
Spectrum Health System 

Rebecca Polastri, LICSW
Executive Regional Outpatient Director
Spectrum Health System 

Megan Tillinghast, LMHC
Clinical Program Director
Spectrum Health System 

12:30
Conference Concludes

Leveraging RPM (and Hospital@Home) to Shape a Long-Term Care Anywhere Strategy: Aligning to NCQA’s Call to Action
The content in the previous two days of the conference has provided a foundation for understanding and using RPM and other similar programs to improve care outcomes and create financial opportunities. The workshop aims to use the interest and commitment to implement RPM as the springboard to expanding into a broader Care Anywhere strategy. NCQA (National Committee for Quality Assurance) recently communicated its Care Delivery Anywhere framework and expectation. Since Care Anywhere will be an increased focus, the workshop will establish the intent and alignment of NCQA’s perspective to a Care Anywhere strategy.

Identify the foundations created by RPM and Hospital@Home and the resolutions to clinician burnout that will promote readiness for Care Anywhere.

Define the Care Anywhere process that orchestrates the demand and supply of future care delivery.

Provide examples, value propositions, and research highlighting additional service areas in addition to RPM that will drive a new Care Anywhere strategy.

Greg Smith
Managing Director
Accenture

About the Workshop Leader

Greg has over 30 years of creating value across provider, payer, and life science companies through successful program management, developing people, and successfully delivering health transformation strategies and technology platforms. He has provided virtual health and Care Anywhere direction to various providers, payers, life science companies, the Veterans Administration, state hospital associations and departments of health, as well as the Office of Rural Health Policy and other federal agencies. Greg has published several articles and books and presented at numerous conferences. During his career, Greg has been an expert panelist for the National Institute of Health – Health of the Populations regarding virtual health, telemedicine, and telehealth.

Virtual Health Lead (including Telemedicine, Telehealth, and Digital Health)
Care Anywhere publications, webinars, and delivery
Patent: Nursing communication technologies (e.g., virtual nursing)