Remote patient monitoring (RPM)
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is care delivered by collecting patient health data — weight, blood pressure, glucose, wearable metrics — outside the clinic, with clinicians reviewing trends and intervening between visits.
- Devices report data between visits; clinicians act on trends
- Medicare reimburses RPM under dedicated CPT codes
- Common in weight care, hypertension, and diabetes programs
- Continuous by design — visits become the escalation path
How RPM works
A connected device or app reports readings on an ongoing basis; the platform aggregates them and flags trends or threshold breaches; a clinician reviews and acts — adjusting a dose, reaching out, or escalating to a visit. The value is the continuous signal: problems surface in days instead of waiting for the next appointment.
Why RPM matters for digital health programs
RPM turns episodic treatment into managed care. A weight program that tracks weekly weigh-ins can titrate GLP-1 doses on evidence rather than recall; an HRT program watching symptoms and labs catches problems between refills. That feedback loop shows up directly in retention — patients stay in programs that visibly respond to their data.
In the insurance world, RPM is also a reimbursement category: Medicare pays for device supply and monitoring time under dedicated CPT codes, which built an entire industry of RPM vendors for hypertension and diabetes management.
RPM vs telehealth visits
A visit is episodic — a moment of clinical attention with a defined start and end. RPM is continuous — a stream that decides when attention is needed. Well-designed programs use both: monitoring as the default state, visits as the escalation. The design question is always who watches the stream and what triggers action; monitoring without a response pathway is liability, not care.
Compliance handled, so you can build
Lithos runs the clinicians, pharmacies, and 50-state rules behind your care program — one API.
Frequently asked questions
Is RPM the same as telehealth?
RPM is one modality within telehealth. A telehealth visit is a discrete encounter; RPM is continuous data collection with clinical review in between.
What conditions use RPM most?
Hypertension, diabetes, weight management, and post-discharge monitoring — anywhere a simple measurement tracks disease state.
Do cash-pay programs use RPM?
Increasingly yes — not for reimbursement but for retention and outcomes: weigh-ins in GLP-1 programs and symptom tracking in HRT are RPM in practice.