• Posted June 12, 2026

Sepsis, Lung Infection Patients See No Benefit From Remote Monitoring

Wearable technology and smartphone communication have enabled hospitals to experiment with releasing patients earlier, remotely monitoring them as they recuperate from home.

This approach has been shown to work for some conditions — heart failure, for example — but a new study indicates remote monitoring might not be as helpful in other serious illnesses.

Seniors treated for sepsis, flu and COVID-19 infections were more likely to require readmission to a hospital when they tried to recuperate at home under remote monitoring, researchers reported June 11 in JAMA Network Open.

“Remote therapeutic monitoring did not increase days at home after discharge” for any patients who developed sepsis from serious infections, concluded the research team led by Dr. Sachin Yende, a professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Among adults 65 years or older, remote monitoring reduced days at home and increased readmissions,” the team added.

More than 3 million Americans are hospitalized annually for serious infections like influenza, sepsis and COVID-19, researchers said in background notes.

Patients who survive sepsis or lower respiratory tract infections experience a 1-year death rate of approximately 40%, and more than 60% of hospital readmissions are driven by infections and worsening of heart and lung disease, researchers said.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have been promoting remote monitoring as a strategy that could improve access to care while also saving money, researchers said.

Between 2019 and 2022, remote monitoring among Medicare patients increased 10-fold, researchers said.

“Health systems, insurers and policymakers all want to reduce hospital readmissions, and most patients prefer to recover safely at home,” Yende said in a news release.

“Remote monitoring has been held up as a solution, is reimbursed by the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid and its use has grown,” he said. “But, aside from a few conditions, there’s a dearth of high-quality data to show it reduces readmissions.”

For the new study, researchers tested remote monitoring among nearly 1,300 patients treated for sepsis or lower respiratory tract infections across 19 hospitals. The goal was to keep patients out of the hospital for three months following their discharge.

Patients assigned to remote monitoring filled out twice-weekly questionnaires tracking their symptoms, researchers said. Nurses reviewed these questionnaires and reached out to the patients whose responses indicated health problems.

Considering all patients, remote monitoring did not do any better than usual care at helping people with serious infections stay out of the hospital, researchers found.

“Our remote monitoring approaches did not increase the days spent at home after discharge,” researchers wrote.

Among patients 65 and older, remote monitoring increased the odds of readmission by 33% to 44%, depending on the intensity of their monitoring, the study found.

“These findings suggest that the CMS should reassess the role of remote therapeutic monitoring in reducing readmissions and underscore the value of tailoring remote monitoring in post–acute care for serious infections,” researchers wrote.

“Our findings highlight the challenges of implementing and scaling remote monitoring across health systems and among patients recovering from serious illness who are managing complex care needs, including medications, follow-up appointments and ongoing symptoms,” the team concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on sepsis.

SOURCES: JAMA Network Open, June 11, 2026; University of Pittsburgh, news release, June 11, 2026