Practices That Adopted Remote Physiologic Monitoring Increased Medicare Revenue And Outpatient Visits

The use of remote physiologic monitoring (RPM)-the remote transmission of patients' physiologic measures (such as blood pressure) to care teams-has grown rapidly. For practices, establishing an RPM program can improve patient care and increase revenue, but it may also require substantial investment, including hiring new staff. No prior work has quantified the impact of RPM on practices, such as its effects on practice revenue, care delivery, and resource allocation across patients. Using national Medicare claims, we identified 754 primary care practices that began billing for RPM during the period 2019-21 and examined practice-level outcomes through 2023. After these practices adopted RPM, Medicare revenue increased by 20.0 percent relative to similar, matched, nonadopting practices. This was driven by direct billing for RPM as well as more outpatient visits and care management services. Although adopting practices experienced a 2.7 percent increase in billing providers, revenue increases were predominantly driven by increased activity per provider. Increases in care volume for patients receiving RPM did not seem to come at the expense of other patients.