Most hospital leaders agree that remote care makes sense for chronic respiratory patients. Far fewer have a program running. The reason is rarely clinical. It is the project: the staff to hire, the devices to buy and the IT work to schedule before the first patient is enrolled.
EBM Health Care Strategies built its hospital model to remove those three obstacles. The aim is a remote care program that a respiratory department can begin without a capital request, a recruiting effort or a place in the IT queue.
Why remote care programs stall
A typical proposal follows a familiar path. Someone builds the clinical case. Then the questions arrive. Who will monitor patients, and how many new positions does that take? Which devices do patients need, who buys them and who ships, tracks and recovers them? How does the new system connect to what the hospital already runs, and how long will that take?
Each question is reasonable. Together they turn a good idea into a multi-quarter initiative with an up-front budget, and many programs never get past that stage.
No hiring
EBM provides the management platform and the tools, and deploys the program into the department’s existing workflows. Physicians stay in control of their patients’ care. The program handles the between-visit workload, escalates what needs attention and documents everything.
Because answers arrive with alerts already raised for readings outside the care plan, the team is not asked to scan long lists of data. That design keeps the workload focused on the patients who need attention, rather than on reviewing everyone equally.
No equipment purchases
Patients use the phone they already carry. The app asks the questions the care team has chosen, such as weight, activity or breathlessness on a scale, in large type and one question at a time. It takes about thirty seconds a day.
There is no device inventory to manage and no kit to ship before a patient can start. For patients, it means nothing new to learn beyond a short daily routine on a familiar phone.
No IT integration or build-out
The platform is provided and managed by EBM, so the hospital is not asked to build or integrate a new system before launch. The care team works from a dashboard where answers arrive in real time, out-of-range readings generate an alert the same day, fourteen-day trends are visible and time spent reviewing and acting is captured automatically.
Communication runs through CareConnect™ as well: one channel between the patient and everyone on their care team, and between team members. It is built for collaboration, not as another inbox.
What else makes it deployable
Removing hiring, equipment and IT handles the operational side. Three further design choices handle enrollment:
- No CPT codes required. PDS™ and Hybrid Overnight Oximetry do not depend on a billing code to be used.
- No payer qualification. Nothing has to be approved against a payer’s definition before a patient benefits.
- No limits on who. Use is not restricted by age, diagnosis, symptoms or insurance type.
Together, these mean a program can be deployed across a whole chronic population on day one, and the cost per patient is a small fraction of what a single office visit reimburses. There is zero up-front investment.
What hospitals can expect to start with
Our hospital programs begin with a consultative process rather than a procurement cycle. We walk your team through the platform, build a question set for one of your protocols and show you what comes back. From there, the program can extend to other protocols and departments, including respiratory care, physical therapy and rehabilitation.
The goals are the same ones hospital leadership already tracks: new revenue from a service the department did not offer before, fewer 30-day readmissions, and continuous patient data that supports CMS star ratings, HCC risk adjustment and value-based care reporting. These are what the program is designed to support, not guaranteed results; they depend on the population and how the program is run.
For the financial framing, read From Cost Center to Contributor. For what the first weeks look like, see From First Conversation to First Patient.
See it with your own patient population
We will show your team how a remote respiratory program runs inside your existing workflows, with no hiring, equipment or IT build required. Request a demonstration or call (833) 837-8881.