For many people who are very sick — like those with heart failure, very high blood pressure, or severe COVID-19 — leaving the hospital can be scary. While in the hospital, they have nurses and doctors checking their vital signs around the clock.
But once they go home, that constant support is gone. Without this kind of close monitoring, it’s easy to miss early warning signs of serious health problems. These missed signs often lead to a return trip to the hospital, sometimes within just a few days.
This cycle of going home and then coming back to the hospital is not only stressful and expensive, but it also adds to the crowding in emergency rooms.
But a new study from the University of Michigan has found a way to help break that cycle. The solution? A home monitoring program that gives patients medical devices and connects them with a care team — all from the comfort of their own home.
The study found that patients who took part in this program had 59% fewer hospital stays in the six months after they joined. Even when researchers excluded those with COVID-19, they still saw a 49% drop in hospitalizations. That’s a big deal for patients and hospitals alike.
The program, called Patient Monitoring at Home, provides each person with a set of devices: a thermometer, blood pressure monitor, pulse oximeter (for blood oxygen), a weight scale, and a tablet computer.
These devices connect through Bluetooth to the tablet, which sends the health data instantly to a team of nurses and doctors at the University of Michigan Health system. Patients don’t even need Wi-Fi — the tablet uses a built-in cellular signal.
The idea for the program started during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, hospitals were full, and keeping patients safe at home became a top priority. Rules around telehealth were also relaxed, which helped make programs like this possible and easier to fund.
Although the pandemic has slowed down, the program has continued to grow and is now being used for many different health conditions.
In the study, more than 1,700 patients were included. Most joined right after a hospital stay, while others enrolled after a clinic visit or a short stay in a nursing home. While COVID-19 was a common reason to join at first, many people in the program also had serious illnesses like heart failure, diabetes, lung disease, cancer, or liver problems.
When the kit arrives at a patient’s home, a nurse calls and helps them get started. Patients are asked to check their vital signs and answer a short daily survey about their symptoms.
If something looks wrong — like low oxygen levels or a sudden rise in weight — the nurse calls the patient and may bring in a doctor or another team member to help. The program team is available on weekends too, and patients can have video visits with healthcare providers as needed.
At first, only about half of the patients completed their check-ins every day. But the program has since improved how it teaches and supports patients. Now, most people take their readings about 75% of the time and fill out the surveys 71% of the time.
After about one or two months, when a patient’s condition has been stable for several days, they leave the program. The team then arranges for the kit to be picked up, cleaned, and used by someone else.
The researchers wanted to see if the program made a lasting difference. They looked at how many times people were hospitalized in the six months before joining and compared it to the six months after. Even after the patients stopped using the kit, the number of hospital stays stayed much lower.
This shows that remote patient monitoring is not just a short-term solution. It can make a real, lasting difference. The study also found that the program saved money — about $12 million — by preventing hospital visits.
Now, the team at the University of Michigan hopes their work will help create a national standard for home monitoring programs. Right now, many hospitals and home care agencies have their own versions, but there’s no clear rulebook about how to choose the right patients or how to respond when there’s a problem.
The researchers believe that programs like theirs could become a regular part of care for people with serious health conditions, especially older adults. They also hope Medicare and other insurers will continue to support these kinds of programs, especially since temporary rules allowing payment for telehealth were recently extended until 2025.
In summary, this study proves that with the right tools and support, patients can safely manage serious health conditions at home — and avoid another trip to the hospital.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about how eating eggs can help reduce heart disease risk, and Vitamin K2 could help reduce heart disease risk.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about how to remove plaques that cause heart attacks, and results showing a new way to prevent heart attacks, strokes.
The research findings can be found in Telemedicine and E-Health.
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