Ray Costantini, M.D., MBA, CEO and Co-Founder, Bright.md

Ray Costantini, M.D., MBA, CEO and Co-Founder, Bright.md

It’s that time of year again. Healthcare delivery systems are preparing for the onslaught of patients who will walk through the door with cough, cold, and flu symptoms in various stages of severity. This season presents providers with challenges ranging from controlling contagion and protecting fragile populations to increased workloads and supply and demand discrepancies.

So, like every year, systems are informing patients about CDC’s flu shot recommendations and then setting up clinics where patients can get them; educating schools and the rest of the community about outbreak conditions; ordering extra supplies; and staffing up for the increased number of patient visits.

Healthcare providers that offer virtual care—especially asynchronous virtual care– to their patients are often better equipped to deal with this challenging time of year. They can encourage sick patients to seek care from the comfort of their homes, reducing the number of people who they could spread the virus to—including at-risk populations such as pregnant women, newborn babies, elderly patients, and those with weakened immune systems.

While all remote-care programs can help manage contagion, asynchronous virtual access solutions offer some unique benefits. Solutions that provide automation support increase provider efficiency when treating high-demand but low-acuity conditions, like the flu. This frees up time for clinicians to meet the needs of patients with high-acuity needs or chronic conditions. Increased efficiency can also help prevent provider burnout, which is typically at a dangerous high during the fall and winter months.

New findings from a nationwide program that links neurologists with patients with Parkinson’s disease in their homes via video conferencing shows that telemedicine can successfully deliver quality care. The study, which appears today in the journal Neurology, points to a new way to improve care for people who suffer from the disease, but may have not have access to a neurologist.

“Virtual house calls for chronic diseases like Parkinson’s are not only as effective as in-person care but broader adoption of this technology has the potential to expand access to patient-centered care,” said Ray Dorsey, M.D., the David M. Levy Professor of Neurology at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) and lead author of the study. “We now have the ability to reach anyone, anywhere but the promise and benefits of telemedicine will not be fully realized until the changes are made in Medicare policy.”

Dalia A. Haroune, Solution Principal, Healthcare, Slalom Consulting

Samantha Vadas, Strategy Consultant, Slalom Consulting

The telehealth market is booming and expected to expand to over $30 billion globally by 2020, according to Modor Intelligence’s research. Its use cases are shifting from remote patient care through data sharing, to remote patient care and wellness through live interaction and teleconsultation. The industry is focusing on applications with proven effectiveness in care outcomes, as well as technologies that enable strategic and operational imperatives like cost savings, revenue growth, and improved patient experience.

Key areas of telehealth seeing this growth are real-time video consults, store and forward specialty consults (particularly between provider facilities using asynchronous transfer of data, images, sound or video), and remote patient monitoring. We’re also seeing an expansion in the care settings where telehealth is used and the champions that are driving its growth. Historically, the use of telehealth has been driven primarily by providers and used mostly in the hospital setting. More recently, we’ve seen applications of telehealth in ambulatory care clinics, doctors’ offices, long-term care facilities, the ER, and in the home. The emphasis on value-based care and the rise of consumerism are encouraging patients, employers, and payors to join providers in championing telehealth and the use of telehealth technology.

Telehealth has been around for decades, so why has it only recently experienced faster growth, adaption, and interest? These are the four main drivers:

Newly published research by Harvard Medical School and the RAND Corporation reveals a dramatic growth in the use of telemedicine for the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders in rural areas, but strikingly uneven distribution of services across states.

The results, published in Health Affairs, stem from analysis of telemedicine use among Medicare beneficiaries nationwide over10 years.

The study shows an average 45 percent jump per year in telemedicine visits between 2004 and 2014, among rural patients, with striking variation across states. Four states had no such visits in 2014, while in nine states, there were more than 25 telemedicine visits per 100 patients with serious mental illness.

The reasons for the dramatically uneven distribution remain unclear, but the study investigators say state laws that regulate the provision and reimbursement of telemedicine services for mental health appear to play some role.

“Our results highlight the growing importance of telemedicine in the treatment of mental health disorders in rural settings where access to mental health care is often problematic,” said study lead investigator Ateev Mehrotra, associate professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School.

Steve McGraw, Chief Executive Officer, REACH Health

In a rapidly changing U.S. healthcare market, telemedicine programs have proven successful in enabling better care for a larger population of patients. But in the case of any maturing industry, telemedicine is in the midst of an evolution, where technologies and processes are adapting to the needs of clinicians who are increasingly comfortable with remote care.

We started the annual U.S. Telemedicine Benchmark Survey to take an objective look at  how the industry was evolving and what was driving those changes. Each year, we spend months surveying healthcare executives, physicians and nurses across the U.S. about their telemedicine priorities, goals and challenges. The survey results provide a real-world look at the state of U.S. telemedicine, the opportunities for better patient care and the challenges that need to be overcome to get there.

In a series of upcoming articles, I will walk through the findings of the 2016 U.S. Telemedicine Benchmark Survey and discuss what exactly they mean for hospitals, clinicians and patients.

Steve McGraw, Chief Executive Officer, REACH Health

In Part Two of our series, we discussed telemedicine objectives, keys to program success and the biggest telehealth-related challenges facing healthcare organizations. The information was gleaned from the annual U.S. Telemedicine Benchmark Survey, which compiled insights from hundreds of healthcare executives, physicians and nurses across the U.S.

Today, we’re going to explore the survey findings on the top contributors for reaching return on investment (ROI) with telemedicine programs and look at the maturity status of U.S. programs by care setting and and service line.

Key contributors to telemedicine ROI   

With the healthcare industry striving to find ways to improve patient care while simultaneously lowering costs, telemedicine has been examined as a means to help organizations achieve this ambitious goal. But with any investment comes great pressure to prove ROI.

Benchmark survey respondents shared the key contributors to ROI for their telemedicine programs and the top five results included:

Steve McGraw, Chief Executive Officer, REACH Health

In Part One of our series, we took a look at the evolution of the telemedicine industry and discussed findings from the annual U.S. Telemedicine Benchmark Survey. Two key findings: nearly two-thirds of respondents said telemedicine was a top priority, and providers are rapidly expanding the number of service lines offered.

Today, we’re going to look closely at what healthcare organizations hope to achieve with telemedicine, key factors to make those goals a reality and the overall challenges within the industry.

Telemedicine objectives: It’s all about the patients

Among survey participants, including executives, physicians and nurses, the most common telemedicine objectives focused on patients. Improving patient outcomes (96 percent), improving patient convenience (87 percent) and increasing patient engagement and satisfaction (86 percent) occupied the top three positions.

With the healthcare industry’s focus on improving patient care and hospitals in competitive geographies vying for patients, perhaps these results are not surprising. Here’s how other objectives broke out:

Teresa Meek, a writer for Insight Enterprises

Oct. 1 was the International Day of Older Persons, established by the United Nations in 1990 and commonly known as Older Persons Day.

Aging has changed dramatically, and so have the demographics of older people – there are far more of them, and they are living longer. Many people worry that a social and economic catastrophe could result from caring for them.

But technology might just solve the problem.

A demographic surge

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), we are in the midst of a demographic revolution. Worldwide, the number of people age 60 and above will double by 2025 and reach almost 2 billion by 2050.

In the U.S., seniors 65 and older represented 14.5 percent of the population in 2014, the last year of data collection. By 2060, there will be about 98 million older persons, more than double the number in 2014.

It’s not just because pig-in-the-python baby boomers are hitting 65 – seniors are living longer, too. Life expectancy worldwide has risen 5 years during 2000-2015. In the United States, from 2005 to 2015, life expectancy has steady increased from 77.49 to 79.16.

Dr. Alan Pitt, Chief Medical Officer, Avizia and attending physician and Professor of Neuroradiology at the Barrow Neurological Institute

Most healthcare services are now delivered beyond the walls of a hospital or clinic.

As a result, many involved in the delivery of care are thinking ‘outside of the box.’ Whether through telehealth virtual visits or retail drug store clinics, we are beginning to reimagine how and where healthcare is delivered.

School-based health clinics are well positioned to deliver high quality care and address the gaps that exist nationwide in pediatric care. The Brookings Institute reported that school-based health centers currently serve more than two million children in the U.S. each year. But while a school nurse can provide for basic medical needs, they are typically understaffed and unable to meet the needs of every student.

Today, more than 6 million kids in the U.S.  miss 15 or more days of school in one year for health related issues.  These absences have a significant impact on a child’s ability to learn and retain knowledge.  And with many school systems adopting attendance-based funding mechanisms, there are financial incentives to keep kids healthy and in school. 

By using telehealth to connect school nurses with more advanced providers, many additional healthcare and education needs could be met without disrupting the day for students, parents and educators.