ACC: Cost-benefit of remote monitoring depends on players

Cmio.net: March 29, 2012.

CHICAGO—Calculating the cost-benefit ratio of remote monitoring patients who have implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) depends on many variables, and the answer hinges on who pays and who benefits, said Mark H. Schoenfeld, MD, of Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., in a March 24 presentation at the 61st annual American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific session.

“When you talk about cost-benefit, you have to ask to whom is the cost and to whom is the benefit, and you have to acknowledge there are many individual players,” said Schoenfeld, who has served on guideline committees and expert consensus panels looking at cardiac device monitoring. “There is the individual patient, the healthcare provider, society, taxpayers, third-party payors, government and, of course, industry.” Read More