Prepared for Fountain Hills Emergency Room & Medical Center · 2026 Strategy Review · Confidential
Remote Care Service Line Optimization · Prepared for Fountain Hills Emergency Room & Medical Center

A Scalable, Profitable Remote Care Service Line for Fountain Hills Medical Center

The primary care panel in Fountain Hills and Gilbert already carries the conditions Medicare pays to manage between visits: hypertension, type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol. This is the 24-month plan to bill for that work on Azalea, with CoachCare staffing the program, to add transitional care at every hospital discharge the ER sees coming, and to carry the same model into every clinic the group adds.

$0
24-Month Net Reimbursement
$0
24-Month Net to the Practice
0%
24-Month Practice Margin
0
Unique Patients in Active Remote Care at Month 24

Two counts, two jobs. The headline is 413 unique patients at month 24; the enrollment chart and the Scenario Explorer show 634 active program enrollments, because a patient on both RPM and CCM is one patient and two enrollments.

Physician-Owned · Two Clinics · Built to Add More

The Pieces Are Already in Place

A physician-owned emergency room with a primary care and urgent care clinic beside it, a second clinic in Gilbert, a Medicare panel that skews toward the conditions remote care manages best, an accountable-care contract that rewards keeping those patients out of the hospital, and a new EMR that CoachCare already integrates with. What is missing is the service line itself.

★ Verified

Shared Savings, Enhanced Track

The practice's billing entity appears on the CMS PY2026 Shared Savings Program participant file inside an Enhanced-track ACO, the track with two-sided risk, where avoided admissions among its own patients turn into shared savings.

★ Verified

An Older, Sicker Panel

CY2024 Medicare claims for the two highest-volume internists at 9700 N. Saguaro show hypertension in 73–74% of beneficiaries, diabetes in about one in five, and chronic kidney disease in 16–24%. Most of the panel is 75 or older.

✓ In place

24/7 Emergency Room Next Door

Board-certified emergency physicians, on-site CT, X-ray, ultrasound, lab and pharmacy. Every ER visit by a panel patient is a signal the care team can act on the same week, not a chart note discovered at the next annual visit.

✓ In place

Azalea Health, Now Implementing

The group is moving to Azalea Health today. CoachCare is an Azalea integration partner with a bi-directional connection, so the remote care program can go live inside the same implementation window instead of after it.

One structural fact completes the picture: at Fountain Hills, no remote patient monitoring, chronic care management or advanced primary care management program is visible at meaningful scale in CY2024 Medicare claims or public materials. The Gilbert clinic ran a small physician-led RPM and CCM program in 2024, which is proof the panel responds; the practice-wide, staffed service line is what does not exist yet.

The 2026 Window

Why This Panel, Why This Year

Three things line up for an independent primary care group in the Valley in 2026: richer remote care billing, a two-sided ACO contract that pays for the same outcomes, and a growth plan that needs a program built once and installed many times.

Live now
CY2026

Short-Window RPM Is Billable

New CPT codes 99445 (2–15 days of device data) and 99470 (the first 10 minutes of management) remove the 16-day floor that used to block episodic monitoring. Post-discharge and titration windows are now cleanly billable next to the standard monthly RPM stack, and TCM at the discharge itself pays for the hand-off.

Compounding
Two-Sided

Shared Savings Reward the Same Work

Under the Enhanced track the ACO shares in savings and losses. The between-visit touches that generate care-management revenue are the same touches that keep hypertensive and diabetic patients out of the hospital, which is where shared savings come from.

Strategic
25–30

Built Once, Installed Everywhere

The group plans two more clinics next year and a Valley-wide network of 25 to 30 clinics inside five years, including cardiology. A remote care program that runs at a 40%-plus operating margin is a plug-in for every clinic acquired, live from the first month a new panel comes on.

Hypertension
Type 2 Diabetes
High Cholesterol
Chronic Kidney Disease
Heart Failure
The Operating Model

One Panel, One Coordinated Program

A named service line with its own P&L and scorecard, following the multi-chronic Medicare patient the practice already knows, inside the Azalea chart the practice is moving to now.

The Stack: RPM + CCM, with TCM at Every Discharge
  • CCM Monthly chronic care management for the Medicare patients carrying two or more chronic conditions, which on this panel is most of them. The longitudinal wrapper, and the program the leadership team asked to start with.
  • RPM Blood pressure cuff and scale for the hypertension, diabetes and heart-failure cohorts. The continuous early-warning and titration layer between visits, and the program that keeps patients engaged with their CCM care plan.
  • TCM Transitional Care Management (99495 / 99496) for every panel patient discharged from a hospital or observation stay. The ER is where those admissions begin: it transfers the patient, knows the receiving hospital, and knows the day the patient comes home. That is the 2-business-day contact and the 7- or 14-day visit TCM pays for, and every ER visit also triggers the three-touch follow-up cadence inside 14 days.
The Engine, the Staffing, and What Comes Next
  • Engine Enrollment outreach, cellular devices, 24/7 alert triage, nurse follow-up, documentation and billing-ready claims, operated by CoachCare and governed by the practice's physicians.
  • Staffing Enrollment outreach, care managers and device logistics are CoachCare's payroll, not the practice's. Embedded in the fee, never deducted from practice margin. The care managers carry about 160 patients each, roughly half the industry norm.
  • APCM Advanced Primary Care Management (G0556–G0558) requires value-model participation the practice already holds. It is named here as the next lever, with zero dollars attached, because the CCM-versus-APCM mix is a decision to make on real enrollment data, not a forecast.
The ownership rule: this is the practice's service line, its patients, its protocols, its revenue. CoachCare is the engine underneath it. It is complementary to whatever analytics the ACO relationship already provides: population-level reporting tells you who needs attention; this program is the staffed, device-connected, billable layer that touches the patient every month.

The CY2026 Billing Stack, at Arizona Rates

ServiceCodesCY2026, Arizona localityUse across the panel
Chronic care management99490 · 99439$64.85 + $49.41 add'lThe longitudinal wrapper; two or more chronic conditions
RPM setup and device supply99453 · 99454 · 99445 (new)$20.96 setup · $50.45/moHypertension, diabetes and heart-failure cohorts; 99445 opens 2–15-day windows
RPM treatment management99457 · 99458 · 99470 (new)$50.65 + $40.61 add'l · $25.49Monthly review, titration, escalation
Transitional care management99495 · 99496$215.45 / $292.37 per dischargeEvery hospital or observation discharge the ER transferred or learns of; not in the forecast below
Advanced primary care managementG0556 · G0557 · G0558$16.04 · $52.72 · $114.88/moNamed as the next lever; not in any figure on this page

Rates are the CY2026 Physician Fee Schedule non-facility amounts for ZIP 85268 (Noridian, Arizona locality 00), the same basis the Value Analysis below is priced on.

In the System You Are Moving To

Built Into the Azalea Health Workflow

The group is implementing Azalea Health now. CoachCare is an Azalea integration partner: eligibility flags and orders leave the chart, monitored vitals, care documentation, enrollment status and billing-ready claims come back into it. The integration typically takes about four weeks, so it fits inside the implementation already under way.

Azalea Health The practice's EMR and billing One chart per patient Eligibility flags & orders Vitals & documents Patient portal In-house billing team CoachCare Remote care platform + care team Cellular BP cuffs & scales 24/7 monitoring Care managers, ~160:1 Enrollment team Billing engine FROM THE PRACTICE Eligible-patient flags and referral orders Patient health history BACK TO THE PRACTICE Monitored vitals and alert dispositions Care summary and compliance documentation Real-time enrollment status Claims, billing-ready, every patient, every month Clinicians stay in the chart they are adopting; the program lives alongside it

~4 weeks

typical Azalea integration timeline, run in parallel with onboarding, training and care-team assignment.

Like a lab order

a physician or APP flags an eligible patient and submits the referral from inside Azalea; CoachCare picks it up, ships the device and reaches the patient.

In-house billing

claims arrive billing-ready in the workflow the practice's own billing team already runs. No PDFs, no re-keying.

The Question Leadership Asked

Full Service or Software Only: The Same Panel, Two Models

Same panel, same Arizona rates, same 24 months. The full-service column is the forecast on this page. The software-only column runs the same enrollment engine with two things an in-house team carries: enrollment at three-quarters of the pace, because nobody's whole job is enrolling, and code completion 25% lower, because time-based codes only pay when the minutes are logged every month. CoachCare's platform and device fees are at list; the practice hires the clinical minutes.

Full Service

CoachCare staffs enrollment outreach, monitoring, care management and billing preparation

$561K
24-mo net to the practice
42.6%
24-mo practice margin
  • 0 practice hires. Care managers, enrollment outreach, device logistics and alert triage are CoachCare's payroll.
  • 533 enrollments by month 6. Both programs reach their ceilings by month 8; net to the practice is positive from month 2 onward.
  • Year 1 $228,950 · Year 2 $332,121 net to the practice, after every CoachCare fee.
  • $1,317,408 of net reimbursement captured, with CoachCare's fees priced so the practice's margin lands above 40% at Arizona rates.
Fees are per active patient per month, so cost scales with the census and stops when a patient discharges. No capital, no ramp period on payroll.

Software Only

The practice employs the care team and runs enrollment; CoachCare supplies the platform, Azalea integration and devices

$100K
24-mo net to the practice
10.6%
24-mo practice margin
  • 400 enrollments by month 6 against 533 in full service; the ceilings arrive in month 10 instead of month 8.
  • $943,076 of net reimbursement, $374,332 less, because a quarter of the billable minutes never get logged. 3.00 clinical FTEs plus a program lead and an outreach role to deliver the rest; first positive month 6.
  • Year 1 $3,944 · Year 2 $95,801 net to the practice after CoachCare's $186,922 in software, integration and device fees and $656,410 of practice payroll.
  • $461,326 less to the practice over 24 months, and the whole difference is execution: slower enrollment, missed minutes, and payroll that starts before the census does.
Where software-only wins is control and long-run unit cost at very large scale. Where it loses is the first two years: enrollment nobody owns, minutes nobody logs, hiring ahead of the census, and program management nobody budgeted.
How to read this: the two handicaps on the software-only column are modest by industry experience; in-house programs more often stall between 100 and 200 patients than reach the ceiling at all. For a group with this growth plan the sensible path is to launch full service, prove the census and the workflow, and revisit the staffing model once the program is running across several clinics.
The Same Two Models, Ten Locations Later

Scaling to 10 New Clinics and 5,000 More Medicare Patients

The group's plan is more clinics, fast. This runs both models through that plan: the two clinics today, then one new location every quarter from month 4, each bringing 500 in-scope Medicare patients and three referring clinicians. Move the slider to match the plan you are actually working. Full service adds care team as the census grows, so every new site inherits a running program the month it opens. Software only carries what an in-house program carries at scale: each new site waits three months for a trained lead before enrolling, the team hires one care manager at a time and each hire lands three months after the requisition, one in four care managers turns over every year, and the pace and completion handicaps above apply everywhere.

Full service · 36 months
$2.61M
net to the practice on $6.15M of net reimbursement · 42.4% margin
Software only · 36 months
$1.06M
net to the practice on $3.54M · 29.9% margin · $1.55M behind
Full service · month 36
1,888
unique patients in active remote care across 12 sites; 12 CoachCare care managers at 160:1, none on the practice's payroll
Software only · month 36
1,814
unique patients; 8 in-house care managers hired and re-hired; 1,000 patients at month 24 against 1,396

Unique Patients in Active Remote Care, 36 Months

Each rise in the full-service line is a new clinic coming online with the program already running. The software-only line flattens every time the in-house team hits its staffed capacity and waits for the next hire.

Cumulative Net to the Practice, 36 Months

Same rates, same panel growth. The gap opens in the first year and widens every quarter a new site opens; by month 36 it is $1.55M.
What this says about the growth plan: in full service the remote care program is part of the acquisition playbook, switched on at each new site the month it opens, with the margin intact at 42.4%. In software only, every new clinic is another hiring cycle, another lead to train, and another three months of patients the program has not reached. The plan the leadership team described, 25 to 30 clinics in five years, is the case for the model that scales without the practice hiring for it.
Clinical Governance & Escalation

Every Reading Runs Through One Escalation Engine

The Value Analysis shows the program pays. This is how it stays safe. Every blood pressure, weight or glucose reading and every CCM check-in routes through the same protocol, so the practice sees signal rather than noise, and a physician-owned group keeps clinical control.

Reading arrivesCellular device transmits; the value is checked against the patient's individual thresholds.
Critical value?Escalates immediately, regardless of symptoms. Everything else goes to a retake and a symptom check first.
Trend defined objectivelyThree readings at least an hour apart for blood pressure or glucose, or three inside seven days for heart rate.
Unreachable patientVoicemail plus scheduled callback; a critical value or a confirmed trend escalates anyway.
DocumentedVital, findings, method, contact, outcome and follow-up, written to the chart every time.
Emergent

911 with the patient on the line

Chest pain, new shortness of breath, stroke signs, syncope, worst-ever headache, sudden swelling. CoachCare's urgent and emergent policy supersedes any client-specific preference. If the patient refuses, the clinic is notified; otherwise CoachCare activates 911.

Non-critical

To a named practice team member

Out-of-range but not emergent findings route to the clinician or nurse the practice designates, with the readings, the symptom check and the recommended next step attached.

Stable, resolved

FYI in the record

A retake that lands in range and a symptom check that is clean closes the loop with a chart note and nothing else. The practice's inbox is reserved for what needs a decision.

Continuity

Re-escalation on a fixed cadence

An unreachable patient is re-attempted on a schedule, the practice is notified at every decision point, and a patient who stops transmitting is worked before a billing month is lost.

The Post-Discharge Cadence, and Why the ER Matters Here

Any emergency room visit or hospitalization in the last 60 days triggers three touches inside two weeks. For a practice with its own 24/7 emergency room, that trigger fires the same day, and when the patient was admitted it is also the TCM episode: contact within two business days, the visit within 7 or 14 days. That cadence is where the modeled 44 avoided hospitalizations over 24 months come from.

Day 1–2

Reach the patient, reconcile medications against the discharge instructions, confirm the device is transmitting.

Day 5–8

Symptom and reading review, barriers to the plan, follow-up appointment confirmed with the practice.

Day 12–14

Close the episode or extend it; anything trending is escalated through the engine above.

CoachCare Value Analysis · Modeled for Fountain Hills Medical Center

The Value Analysis

A 24-month forecast for the RPM + CCM stack: a 1,750-patient Medicare panel across the Fountain Hills and Gilbert clinics with 1,400 in scope for Year 1, 7 referring clinicians plus CoachCare's enrollment outreach, Arizona locality rates for ZIP 85268, and the Azalea integration. Shared-savings upside and APCM are not in these numbers.

Active Program Enrollments by Program

Monthly active enrollments (services, not patients): clinician referrals at 8/clinician/month with 80% acceptance, CoachCare-run enrollment outreach at 80/month, telephonic outreach, net of discharges. RPM reaches its ceiling in month 7 and CCM in month 8.

Monthly Economics: Reimbursement, Fees, Net to the Practice

Net reimbursement after denials and coinsurance bad debt versus CoachCare fees. Month 1 absorbs the one-time setup; net to the practice is positive from month 2 onward.

24-Month Net Reimbursement Mix

$1.32M across the RPM + CCM stack. CCM carries the larger share, which is what a multi-chronic primary care panel should produce.

The Financial Summary

ProgramNet reimbursementCoachCare feesNet to practice
RPM: devices, data and management$623,799$367,692$256,107
CCM: chronic care management$693,609$360,636$332,973
Implementation, Azalea integration and outreach$28,009−$28,009
24-month total$1,317,408$756,337$561,071
Enrollment outreach, care management and device logistics are CoachCare's expense: embedded in the fee, never a separate charge to the practice and never deducted from its margin.

24-month practice margin: 42.6% of net reimbursement (Year 1 41.8%, Year 2 43.1%).

Year 1 is $228,950 net to the practice on $547,561 of net reimbursement; Year 2 is $332,121 on $769,847. Month 1 is −$1,985 as the one-time setup lands ahead of the ramp; monthly net is positive from month 2 onward.

Scenario Explorer: Build Your Own Forecast

Adjust the assumptions and watch the 24-month forecast recompute live. Chart counts from the two clinics are the first thing to plug in.
24-mo net reimbursement
$1.32M
24-mo net to the practice
$561K
Unique patients at month 24
413
Program enrollments at month 24
634
Hospitalizations avoided
~44
25,327

Billed Claims / Units

Recurring professional-fee volume over 24 months, generated inside Azalea.

68,950

Physiologic Readings

Blood pressure and weight, a continuous picture of the hypertension and diabetes cohorts between visits.

~44

Hospitalizations Avoided

About $657K in acute-care cost that never gets spent, at $15,000 per admission. Under the Enhanced track, that is shared-savings arithmetic.

5.4

FTE-Years Absorbed

About 11,308 care-team hours of monitoring, outreach and documentation carried by the service line, not by practice staff.

Read the Plateau Correctly

Both Programs Fill Their Eligible Pool Inside a Year

RPM reaches its ceiling of 319 enrollments in month 7 and CCM its ceiling of 315 in month 8. From there the census holds at 634 active enrollments, 413 unique patients. The binding constraint on this forecast is the size of the in-scope panel, not outreach capacity. That is exactly the constraint a group adding clinics is about to relax.

ProgramEnrollment ceilingHow it is definedReached
RPM3191,400 in scope × 65% eligible × 35% acceptanceMonth 7
CCM3151,400 in scope × 75% eligible × 30% acceptanceMonth 8
At month 24634Active program enrollments = 413 unique patients

Eligibility is set for an adult primary care Medicare panel. Every point of eligibility or acceptance the practice's own chart data supports beyond these raises the ceiling, and the forecast, directly.

Every new clinic

The Growth Case: Plug-In Economics

Instinctive Healthcare Solutions already runs two freestanding emergency rooms and two clinics, with a Central Phoenix hospital and ER and a South Tempe pair on the way. Each clinic the network opens or acquires brings a new Medicare panel with the same condition mix. Because the service line runs at a 42.6% margin and CoachCare carries the staffing, a new site inherits the program in its first month rather than rebuilding it. The Scenario Explorer above is the sizing tool for each one: put in the panel, read off the forecast.

Verified eligible · not yet modeled

APCM: The Next Lever

Advanced Primary Care Management (G0556–G0558) is Medicare's bundled monthly payment for the panel this program manages, and its value-model requirement is one the practice already meets through its Shared Savings participation. It carries zero dollars on this page. Once real enrollment data exists, the CCM-versus-APCM mix is the first design decision to make together.

Implementation

Inside the Azalea Window.
Enrolling by Day 45.

CoachCare operates as the service line's engine while the practice's physicians govern protocols and every clinical decision. Full-service delivery means launch needs no new practice headcount; the Azalea integration runs in parallel with onboarding, and the first enrollments follow the first referral orders.

The first 90 days, modeled: 38 active program enrollments by month 1, 101 by month 2, 187 by month 3, led by the CCM wave across the multi-chronic panel and the hypertension RPM cohort.
Schedule the Working Session
Weeks 0–4

Integrate and Charter

Azalea integration built alongside the practice's own implementation; named program lead at the practice; P&L and scorecard; billing configuration with the in-house team; protocol sign-off for the hypertension, diabetes and lipid pathways.

Weeks 4–12

Launch the First Cohorts

CCM across the two-plus-condition panel and RPM for the hypertension and diabetes cohorts; CoachCare's enrollment outreach working both clinics; TCM and the ER-visit follow-up cadence live from day one.

Months 3–9

Reach the Ceilings

RPM reaches its modeled ceiling in month 7 and CCM in month 8; monthly scorecard to the executive team; Gilbert panel worked in parallel.

Months 9–24

Widen and Replicate

Re-validate eligibility against chart data, decide the CCM-versus-APCM mix, align reporting with the ACO's quality and cost measures, and install the program at each new clinic as it opens.

About CoachCare

The Experience to Get It Right

The service line on this page runs on infrastructure already proven at national scale.

500,000+

Patients Managed

Over 400 managed conditions for 500,000+ patients.

10,000+

Clinicians on the Platform

Providers running remote care programs on the CoachCare platform.

1,000+

Implementations

Programs implemented and operating in market.

5M+

Claims Generated

Care plan coding and billing that has produced over 5 million claims.

100M+

Vitals Recorded

Over 100 million vitals recorded and 4 million+ care actions enabled.

Policy Watch · CMS-1848-P

2027 Proposed Rule Insights

CMS has proposed cutting the remote-monitoring device-supply codes for CY2027. The proposals are narrower than the headline. Here is what they do to the forecast on this page, priced at the practice's own Arizona locality amounts rather than national averages.

01

What is actually in scope

The proposals reach the remote-monitoring family only. Chronic care management is not in them, and on this forecast CCM carries $693,609 of the $1,317,408 in 24-month net reimbursement. Its own amounts move by about two points, so $14,641 of the $73,949 total sits outside the remote-monitoring arm.

02

How CoachCare is preparing

Two contingencies are already in build. An unbundled arrangement, with the software platform, device logistics and program enablement priced separately, and an MSO-style arrangement in which CoachCare manages the staffing while the practice owns the clinical program and the billing. Whichever way the final rule lands, the program does not have to be rebuilt. For a group that already asked to see the software-only case, that second shape is the one to watch.

03

Where this is heading

CMS's ACCESS Model points at the destination: remote care paid as a risk-based per-member-per-month amount, with half of each payment withheld and reconciled against outcome attainment. Fee-for-service code cuts and that shift are the same policy argument. Pay for results rather than for device-months.

What it takes off this forecast

Three numbers, each smaller than the last, because each one sits on a larger base. Both bars are drawn on one shared dollar scale, so the red can be compared directly across them.

1
−20.6% on device supply, the headline code and the one the proposals cut hardest (99454, $50.45 → $40.06 at the Arizona amount).
2
−9.5% on the remote-monitoring arm, because device supply is only 32% of what this practice's own billing mix puts through that program.
3
−5.6% on the whole service line, because remote monitoring is 47% of it and chronic care management moves only −2.1%.
Remote monitoring alone
−9.5%$564,491 of $623,799
The whole service line
−5.6%$1,243,459 of $1,317,408

24-month net reimbursement, CY2026 final versus CY2027 proposed, every code repriced at Noridian Arizona locality 00 amounts, non-facility, on this practice's own billing mix. Enrollment, acceptance and mix held constant. This is the rate change alone.

The code families, side by side

National non-facility amounts from the proposed rule's Addendum B, so the movement can be read without a locality in the way. The repricing above uses Arizona amounts; the two bases do not reconcile to the dollar, by design.

In scope: remote monitoring
CodeWhat it pays forCY2026CY2027Change
99453Setup and patient education$21.71$20.03−7.7%
99445Device supply, 2–15 days$52.11$41.38−20.6%
99454Device supply, 16–30 days$52.11$41.38−20.6%
99457Treatment management, first 20 minutes$51.77$49.59−4.2%
99458Treatment management, each additional 20 minutes$41.42$40.39−2.5%
99470Treatment management, first 10 minutes$26.05$20.69−20.6%
Not in scope: care management
99490Chronic care management, first 20 minutes$66.13$64.04−3.2%
99439Chronic care management, each additional 20 minutes$50.44$49.92−1.0%
G0556Advanced primary care management, level 1$16.37$16.09−1.7%
G0557Advanced primary care management, level 2$53.78$53.20−1.1%
G0558Advanced primary care management, level 3$117.24$116.91−0.3%

The device-supply and short-treatment codes are held to a one-year maximum reduction by section 1848(c)(7) of the Act, which phases any decrease of 20 percent or more over two years. CY2027 is the capped year; the remainder of the crosswalk lands no earlier than CY2028.

None of this is final

Comments on CMS-1848-P are due September 14, 2026. The final rule publishes in early November 2026 and takes effect January 1, 2027. CoachCare is leading advocacy on the remote-monitoring provisions and will rerun this forecast against the final rates the week they publish.