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A Connected Patient Journey: The Role of Remote Care in Chronic Disease Management · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

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  Hi, everyone. This is Lucas Voss with Becker's
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  Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to
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  the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's great to
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  have you. Today, we're talking about a connected
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  patient journey, the role of remote care in
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  chronic disease management. And joining me for today's
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  discussion, so great to have her, doctor Lucien
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  Eid, the chief medical officer at Health Recovery
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  Solutions. Doctor Eid, great to have you. Great
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  to be here. Thanks for having me on.
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  Absolutely. I do wanna start off with introductions
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  for those that might not know you. If
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  you could just give us a little bit
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  of an overview what you do and and
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  your journey in health care.
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  Sure. Glad to. So I have been working
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  in the digital health care space for about
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  fifteen years. I trained as a physician
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  and did an MD PhD, was planning to
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  be an academic clinician, and then saw a
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  lot of opportunity when electronic health records came
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  out to build better technologies to bring the
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  right data to providers in that workflow. So
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  I started a company called Remedy about fifteen
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  years ago focused on chronic disease management and
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  remote patient monitoring.
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  And last month, Remedy became part of Health
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  Recovery Solutions, and so now I am the
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  chief medical officer at HRS.
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  Helping
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  other physicians now Yeah. Which is fantastic.
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  You've talked a lot about at HRS, about
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  evolving remote
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  patient monitoring specifically from, again, point in time
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  intervention into a more you just talk touched
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  on a comprehensive
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  longitudinal
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  care model.
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  What drove that shift in strategy for you,
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  and how
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  does
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  the acquisition that you've just just touched on
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  accelerate this process for you?
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  You know, I try to always anchor myself
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  in the patient journey. Right? At the end
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  of the day, that's what we're here to
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  do is to improve care for patients,
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  especially those living with chronic health conditions.
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  And so that begins maybe with a diagnosis.
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  That patient may, through an exacerbation, end up
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  in the hospital or some acute care setting
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  where their needs are slightly different and then
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  discharge from that setting to home where they
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  might need more intensive and acute monitoring, and
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  then they go back into the community.
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  And so the strategy here is how do
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  we take care of them at every step
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  along that journey?
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  From diagnosis,
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  through community monitoring, to an acute episode, and
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  back into the community.
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  And so Remedy has operated
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  strictly in that community based ambulatory care space
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  for the past fifteen years.
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  HRS has an amazing footprint that we have
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  built in the sort of acute post acute,
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  and had started to move into the ambulatory
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  setting. So now together, we really uniquely
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  are able to support
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  providers goals of caring for that patient no
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  matter where they are in their journey. It's
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  more interconnected. Yes. And it gives more more
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  of an opportunity to to for more solutions,
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  really. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't make sense
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  if you're the provider, you're the health system
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  to have to have multiple vendors
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  supporting your patient depending where they are in
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  their care journey. Yeah. So we started hearing
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  that in the market in the past couple
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  of years. It's like, why can nobody just
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  support
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  our needs across the entire continuum? And so
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  here we are, ready to do that. We
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  know generally in life, the more handoffs you
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  have, the more prone for errors and mistakes
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  you are, unfortunately.
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  Exactly. I think about that a lot of,
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  like, shift handoff as a provider, right, and
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  that sign out. If we can avoid those,
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  it's in everybody's best interest. Yeah.
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  I do wanna talk a little bit about
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  the complexity
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  of this of it all because when we
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  talk about chronic conditions, right, they don't exist
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  in isolation. Again, talk about interconnectiveness
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  here,
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  especially with diabetes and cardiometabolic
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  issues. They often overlap with long term conditions.
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  Providers are already managing them remotely potentially.
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  How does bringing Remedies experience into HRS
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  then help systems
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  manage these comorbidities
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  more effectively
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  across the entire patient journey as we just
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  outlined? Mhmm.
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  So because of that sort of comorbidity or
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  clinical complexity that you're referring to is one
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  of the places that we are really building,
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  within HRS, our clinical capabilities and that the
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  Remedy, you know, team and platform and experience
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  is bringing in because we really have focused
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  on that clinical aspect of remote patient monitoring
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  is a tool in the toolkit to help
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  improve the outcome of patients with chronic health
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  conditions.
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  But there are other gaps in care that
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  that same patient who you might be monitoring
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  their diabetes or their hypertension with a connected
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  device,
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  but the provider is also focused on overall
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  care. Right? Is this patient on the right
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  statin? Is this patient receiving the right preventative
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  care to prevent complications for this condition?
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  So we're bringing a more holistic
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  clinical lens to that patient care and to
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  the platform
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  to really globally address the needs that that
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  provider has in caring for that patient,
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  and recognizing
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  that, again, the device connectivity,
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  in the home is is a component of
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  that, but it's not the entirety of the
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  solution.
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  Do you feel like that holistic approach is
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  really
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  the way forward as we look towards 2026
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  and 2027?
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  I do. And we often look at sort
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  of this journey to value based care. Right?
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  So we all started with the Affordable Care
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  Act way back when, the initial ACOs, and
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  and there were struggles in sort of that
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  initial model of value based care. And I
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  think one reason is it was a it
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  was a big jump for providers to make
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  from a fee for service world to an
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  outcomes based world.
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  And so this is part of the journey.
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  Right? And enabling these payment models around chronic
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  care management, remote patient monitoring are like stepping
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  stones of how do we help providers
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  get paid to build the muscle of proactively
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  managing populations of patients, not just getting paid
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  for transactionally seeing a patient in clinic, which
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  is how our health system was built. Yeah.
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  And so on this journey to value based
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  care where, you know, CMS has said that
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  they want by 2030
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  all Medicare
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  lives in some sort of at risk model.
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  Right?
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  We have to be focused on the outcome
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  and not just the activity of care. And
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  so while today, we support a lot of
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  fee for service based programs,
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  if we can keep our eye on that
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  North Star of improving clinical outcomes, improving the
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  quality measures
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  is, you know, the goal of these programs.
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  That is that larger clinical context around these
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  complex patient populations.
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  I do wanna come back to an earlier
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  part of our conversation where we've touched on
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  the the tax stack in and of itself
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  and the simplification of all of this. Right?
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  We talked about the handoffs and the issues
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  with handoffs. Right?
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  How does this acquisition again then help simplify
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  when we talk about the tax stack in
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  and of itself while still
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  enabling we're not simplifying. We still wanna do
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  advanced care. How does that work?
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  Right. I mean, our goal is that clinicians
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  and patients
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  should think this is really simple, even if
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  the technology behind the curtain, right, is complex.
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  Yeah. And so what that means is that
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  patient experience needs to be really frictionless.
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  Right? If they have
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  a kit in the home or a device
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  in the home, they need to be able
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  to just step on the scale or take
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  their blood pressure or share data from their,
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  you know, continuous glucose monitor
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  without having to understand
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  how that data is magically flowing to their
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  provider. And the same on the provider side.
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  Remedy has done a lot of work in
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  interoperability
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  over the past ten years
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  and bringing that into now the HRS tech
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  stack so that these are native experiences
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  in the EHR. Right? I don't want a
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  provider to know we exist if I can
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  help it. I want them to think, wow,
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  isn't this new feature great in my EHR
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  and this data is sort of, again, magically
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  showing up. That's a win to me. Yeah.
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  It's a seamless approach.
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  And that might be your answer to the
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  next question, which is our little our crystal
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  ball, so to speak, to look into the
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  future to see what this looks like
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  in twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight, and
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  certainly
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  beyond.
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  For you personally,
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  what does a truly connected longitudinal care model
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  look like? Right? And how can partners like
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  yourselves
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  help health systems get there moving forward?
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  So I think we're at the phase in
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  the innovation life cycle where we've gone from
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  this is novel and really innovative, this idea
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  of being able to monitor patients outside of
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  the clinic
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  to a lot of health systems have implemented
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  pilot programs, and they've demonstrated some success
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  to now this is the standard of care.
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  Right? And every patient receiving care at that
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  health system
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  when discharged
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  with a heart failure exacerbation is gonna have
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  some monitoring when they go home. When diagnosed
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  with new onset diabetes, it's gonna have monitoring
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  at home. Right? It's gonna stop being
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  this
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  new innovative thing, and it's gonna become how
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  medicine is practiced.
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  So that's a great goal. To the to
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  your prior question,
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  we have to make this really frictionless for
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  that to be possible for the health system
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  and take advantage of what we've learned over
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  the past ten years of doing this work
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  and what those early adopters
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  have helped the entire market be able to
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  move forward through their learning. So that's our
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  goal. Right? If this is gonna be standard
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  of care, we have to make it efficient
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  and effective and easy.
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  Yeah. Just to come full circle again. Right?
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  It it the patient needs to be at
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  the center of this regardless. The technology is
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  important. It becomes the enabler, but the patient
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  needs to be the center of it all.
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  Thurgood Rai, it's so great to have you.
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  Thank you so much for taking some time
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  and being here. It's great to have you.
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  Yeah. Thank you so much. Absolutely.
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  And I also want to thank Health Recovery
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  Solutions for sponsoring this podcast. You can tune
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  in to more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by
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  visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.com.