RPM in 2026: RPM and rural health care

Health care experts are awaiting an announcement about how CMS will distribute funding for the new federal $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program. Will any of that money help remote patient monitoring in rural areas that already are underserved for health care? Lucienne Marie Ide, MD, PhD, founder and CEO of Rimidi, a company that operates remote patient monitoring and chronic care management systems, shares here thoughts on the place of RPM in rural health care.

Medical Economics: Can remote patient monitoring enhance health care in underserved rural areas of the nation?
Lucienne Marie Ide, MD, PhD: Absolutely. And we're hearing this from, you know, rural health clinics, from state health entities, the excitement around hopefully being able to direct some of these funds to support sort of remote monitoring and engagement with patients in those communities, because, as you said, often, they are medically underserved. I'm here in Georgia, where in half of our 159 counties, there is no OB/GYN and no pediatrician. That's pretty astounding, so people are routinely having to drive, say, an hour and a half to go to a routine medical visit. We need to flip that and be able to take the health care to the patient and not always require the patient to come to the health care, right? So, examples where I think this can be really impactful — high-risk pregnancy is one. Being able to monitor those moms who live far away from care, who have high blood pressure during pregnancy or some other higher risk factor. We think being able to bring the funds to support clinics even in things like startup costs for a program, getting a system implemented, getting it integrated to their electronic health record, training their staff. And then hopefully these programs are sustainable now that Medicare funding is available to rural health clinics. We're slowly seeing state Medicaid plans come in line with Medicare reimbursement policies around RPM. But those struggling, many times, rural hospitals, or rural health clinics they need the support. And they have, you know, a patient population who can really benefit? And people can talk about this sort of this hub and spoke model. But you know, at the end of the day, people need to be able to get to actual health care and and need to know when they need to get to care. So, I think the ability to monitor patients in their home and sort of bring health care to them, troubleshoot and support what we can for that patient in keeping them at home so they're not taking a whole day off of work to travel an hour and a half, two hours to get to health care if their needs can be addressed in the home.