A prospective observational study evaluating the use of remote patient monitoring in ED discharged COVID-19 patients in NYC

Objectives: We investigated whether continuous remote patient monitoring (RPM) could significantly reduce return Emergency Department (ED) revisits among coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients discharged from the emergency Department. Materials and methods: A prospective observational study was conducted from a total of 2833 COVID-19 diagnosed patients who presented to the Montefiore Medical Center ED between September 2020–March 2021. Study patients were remotely monitored through a digital platform that was supervised 24/7 by licensed healthcare professionals. Age and time-period matched controls were randomly sampled through retrospective review. The primary outcome was ED revisit rates among the two groups. Results: In our study, 150 patients enrolled in the RPM program and 150 controls were sampled for a total of 300 patients. Overall, 59.1% of the patients identified as Hispanic/Latino. The RPM group had higher body mass index (BMI) (29 (25–35) vs. 27 (25–31) p-value 0.020) and rates of hypertension (50.7% (76) vs. 35.8% (54) p-value 0.009). There were no statistically significant differences in rates of ED revisit between the RPM group (8% (12)) and control group (9.3% (14)) (OR: 0.863; 95% CI:0.413–1. 803; p- 0.695). Discussion and conclusion: Our study explored the impact of continuous monitoring versus intermittent monitoring for reducing ED revisits in a largely underrepresented population of the Bronx. Our study demonstrated that continuous remote patient monitoring showed no significant difference in preventing ED revisits compared to non-standardized intermittent monitoring. However, potential other acute care settings where RPM may be useful for identifying high-risk patients for early interventions warrant further study.