IL Health System Launches RPM Program For Children With RSV

With the goal of reducing the number of occupied hospital beds, OSF HealthCare has added a remote patient monitoring (RPM) program to OSF OnCall Digital Health that will provide at-home care for infants and toddlers with respiratory syncytial virus infection (RSV).

Encompassing over 24,000 employees within 147 locations, OSF HealthCare includes 15 hospitals, 2,097 licensed beds, and two colleges of nursing throughout Illinois and Michigan. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), RSV is a dangerous condition, particularly among infants and young children. Every year in the US, between 58,000 and 80,000 children under the age of 5 are hospitalized due to this condition. In November, the RSV hospitalization rate in children under 4 was 222.4 per 100,000.

Considering these high numbers, OSF added an RPM program to OSF OnCall Digital Health to provide supportive care for young patients and their parents and respond to a state public health alert regarding the current lack of pediatric intensive care unit beds due to the RSV surge.

Through the RPM program, providers and at-home caregivers use a software application that provides education or digital prompts for reporting symptoms over 10 days. Parents receive a care kit from their provider for at-home use.

“We have a pulse oximeter to monitor oxygen levels and their heart rate and then we have a thermometer and then we also provide saline spray, and then a bulb syringe. A lot of parents, when their babies are born, they use them in the hospital, but they might not know that they can use them to help relieve any secretions especially before feeding their children,” said Rose Smith, RN, clinical digital care supervisor at OSF, in the press release.

According to Smith, more than 70 parents and caregivers enrolled newborns and children younger than 5 in the first week of the RSV support program.

“They love having support anytime in the day, however they want to do it – text message, phone call, anything. They can send us pictures. We've really kind of taken that to tailor what parents need to feel comfortable taking their children home, you know, from a clinic, from the hospital during the scary time with RSV,” said Smith.

The program is open to pediatric patients in Illinois and Michigan, and referrals can be made by providers in a hospital emergency department, OSF's urgent care offices, medical offices, or after hospital discharge.

In battling the recent RSV surge, providers have implemented various strategies, including new patient education strategies. 

Jonathan Miller, MD, a pediatrician with Nemours Children’s Health, described to PatientEngagementHIT how and why he used dance as a patient education approach for RSV.

Miller’s dance was posted as a Reel on the organization’s Instagram account and received thousands of likes. The goal of the dance moves was to spread information about the condition, including preventative measures, symptoms, and treatment options.

Further, virtual care modalities like telehealth and remote patient monitoring are increasingly used in pediatric care. 

For example, a collaboration between the Children’s Hospital of New Orleans and Cleveland Clinic announced in August aimed to improve access to pediatric radiology experts through telehealth.

The goals of the collaboration included supplementing care provided by pediatric radiology clinicians at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans and providing access to pediatric radiology services 24/7.