Health Centers Benefit From Improved Clinical Workflows and Enhanced Patient Outcomes
Rimidi, a clinical management platform designed to optimize clinical workflows, today announced expanded partnerships with multiple Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) nationwide, including Green River Medical Center and Northeast Valley Health Corporation (NEVHC), among others. The centers will leverage Rimidi’s FHIR-enabled Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) platform to better serve patients with chronic conditions, all while working within the existing clinical workflow.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on inequities within healthcare, hitting underserved communities the hardest. However, advancements in digital health technologies — such as RPM and telehealth — have proven to play an important role in addressing health disparities and improving access to care. As a result, several government agencies, including the FCC and HRSA, have provided grant funding to support the implementation of digital health tools and remote monitoring programs in community health clinics.
Located in Green River, UT, Green River Medical Center provides a full range of primary and preventive health care, dental and oral health programs, behavioral health, chronic care management, pharmacy services, and urgent care interventions. The FQHC recently implemented Rimidi’s RPM platform as a result of funding received from the HRSA Hypertension Awards. Based on the success of the program thus far, the center plans to soon expand their RPM program to add diabetes and heart failure monitoring, also working to further integrate RPM into their daily workflow to drive patient-specific clinical insights and actions.
“Green River serves a primarily elderly population in a very rural part of Utah, with the closest city and hospital about an hour away. As such, it is essential to ensure our patients are getting the care they need, even when it may be more difficult to visit their clinician in person,” said Tyler Rundell, PA-C Physician’s Assistant, Associate Medical Director, Green River Medical Center. “We turned to Rimidi to support our remote monitoring capabilities, and in doing so, have been able to more easily monitor and care for our patients, which has in turn even led to improved behaviors and outcomes.”
Additionally, NEVHC, an FQHC caring for medically underserved residents of Los Angeles County, implemented RPM to ensure patients were completing routine and essential clinical procedures such as blood pressure checks, while maintaining social distancing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our mission at NEVHC is to provide quality, safe and comprehensive healthcare to the medically underserved residents of our community. Leveraging our grant money by implementing Rimidi has enabled us to continue caring for our patients from the comfort and safety of their homes,” Alejandra Mata, MPH, CHES, Program Manager, Chronic Disease, NEVHC. “Looking ahead, we know that virtual methods of care, such as telemedicine and RPM, are here to stay and are effective when delivered appropriately. My hope is that Medicaid and other county health programs make telehealth reimbursement permanent, and have RPM devices covered by all insurances.”
When choosing which RPM technology to implement, healthcare providers should consider seeking solutions that support multiple disease states and use-cases, embed actionable insights and clinical decision support, and integrate with the practice’s established EMR to ensure a holistic, interoperable solution.
“At Rimidi, we’re proud to partner with FQHCs nationwide to ensure that medically underserved patient populations are benefiting from digital health and care delivery innovations that improve access to care, quality of care and ultimately clinical outcomes,” said Lucienne Ide, MD, PhD, founder of Rimidi. “We will continue to work alongside these centers as they seek to further improve care and clinical workflows via innovative technologies, while also advocating for reimbursement of FQHCs and rural health clinics for RPM activities from both Medicare and Medicaid, a major hindrance to scalability and sustainability of current programs.”
For new information regarding grant opportunities from The Health Resources and Service Administration, or to learn more about Rimidi’s RPM platform, visit rimidi.com.
About Rimidi
Rimidi is a cloud-based software platform that enables personalized management of health conditions across populations. Created by doctors, Rimidi avoids the disconnect in connected care by combining patient-generated health data with clinical data from the EHR to drive patient-specific clinical insights and actions. The net effect is a better health system with optimized clinical workflows that enable better decisions, better relationships, better outcomes and ultimately a better healthcare system. For more information, visit rimidi.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
