What Is The Future Of Telehealth?

Virtual care has become a highly accepted method for obtaining care two years after the pandemic began.

 

Health care providers should focus on high-quality virtual office visits, a seamless technology experience, and data gathering programs to effectively communicate with this demographic.

For a long time, telehealth, also known as virtual care, was a convenience play—a quick and easy method for customers to seek care for sore throats, sinus infections, the flu, pink eye, and other low-acuity ailments. It became a lifeline for many people throughout the pandemic as the only safe way to acquire the care they needed. Consider a simple medication refill for a patient managing a chronic condition: without telemedicine, many of those individuals would have had nowhere to turn during the peak of the pandemic.

Consumers continued to choose virtual care even after in-person care became accessible again, recognizing the convenience and safety it provided. In April 2021, virtual care visits accounted for 5% of all claims for visits with health care providers in the United States, up from less than 0.2 percent in April 2019.

 

Virtual care has become a highly acceptable—and in some cases preferred—option for getting care two years after the pandemic began. 75% of consumers interviewed for the Evernorth 2022 Health Care in Focus (HCIF) report agreed that more care will be given online in the future, and 61% said they intend to use virtual care and other digital health apps for at least some of their health care needs. What’s next for telehealth now that people are more open to using and adopting it?

 

Transitioning to long-term care

It’s clear that telehealth’s time has come to move away from episodic care for low-acuity conditions and toward longitudinal, whole-person care, which telehealth providers have pushed forward in the last two years with the introduction of virtual primary care and a focus on expanding behavioral health services.

According to a study conducted by MDLIVE, a national virtual care provider, 61 percent of consumers are open to using virtual care for routine care needs like annual checkups, specialist referrals, and medication management, while 55 percent are open to using virtual care for behavioral health services.

 

When it comes to supporting patients, improving patient outcomes, and lowering costs for payors and patients, closing gaps in regular preventive care is a cornerstone strategy in health care. Furthermore, primary care physicians (PCPs) have proven to be a vital link between patients with mental health problems and behavioral health providers.

However, more than one-third of persons under the age of 50 do not have a primary care physician, and 150 million adults are anticipated to skip or forego an annual check-up. According to MDLIVE data, 70% of patients who completed a preventive care visit with an MDLIVE physician had not seen a primary care physician in the previous 24 months, and just 25% of those patients had a nearby primary care provider. Sixty-eight percent of those in the same group had at least one chronic condition.

Even for those who do have PCPs, many of the ongoing hurdles to regular primary care visits have little to do with the care itself and considerably more to do with issues of convenience, access, and cost. By reducing many of these barriers, virtual primary care provides consumers with an entrance point into the health-care system, particularly preventative care services.

Even for those who have PCPs, many of the ongoing hurdles to regular primary care visits have little to do with the care itself and considerably more to do with issues of convenience, access, and cost. By reducing many of those barriers, virtual primary care provides consumers with an entrance point into the health-care system, particularly preventative care services.

 

A vital function in the delivery of health care

There are considerable issues with care delivery today, which have a real impact on whether people seek necessary care and how they perceive it. Health plans and sponsors are scrambling to find innovative methods to improve treatment quality, results, and patient satisfaction while extending access to medical and behavioral health care and other related services – all while keeping health care affordable for their members and employees.

Telehealth can be utilized for a range of things, including emergency care or triage, prescription refills and management, surgery and other medical operations follow-up contact, and chronic care management. In fact, according to MDLIVE’s consumer study, more than half of respondents said they would be willing to use it to assist manage a chronic condition.

 

Patients also express high levels of satisfaction with their virtual care encounters. A recent McKinsey survey found that 55 percent of patients prefer telehealth/virtual care visits to in-person sessions.

Although virtual care cannot and should not totally replace in-person care, there is emerging evidence that the two operate better together, and customers demand an integrated approach that offers both options. Offering virtual care choices to patients has the potential to enhance outcomes by providing timely care to people who would otherwise delay care due to time or other constraints, as well as enhancing access for those who live in places where provider availability is limited.

Patients with excellent PCP relationships may find that telehealth helps supplement their care, particularly for elderly patients and those who require assistance managing chronic medical or mental health disorders.

 

Value-based care models are gaining traction.

Value-based care and risk-based models, which compensate providers for quality rather than quantity of treatments, are quickly displacing fee-for-service reimbursement models. Efficiency measures (such as ER visit rate and referrals to high-performing physicians) are combined with clinical quality metrics and patient happiness in value-based care performance measures.

Value-based care has been shown to lower overall costs while enhancing clinical quality and patient happiness when implemented properly, and because telehealth has been shown to lower costs, it will play a key part in a successful transition to value-based care models.

Virtual primary care providers can be equipped with the data and information they need to make referrals to high-performing specialists and preferred labs while also ensuring that they are prescribing the most cost-effective drug therapies and pharmacy options based on plan design and the benefits available to the patient, thanks to simple health plan integrations. According to one study, these types of efficiencies can save health plans and sponsors an average of $200 on a typical care visit.

Furthermore, telehealth and other digital health tools can assist in identifying and engaging populations that require ongoing monitoring and dialogue, such as those with multiple chronic conditions, those who could benefit from behavioral health services, and those who are negatively affected by social determinants of health (SDoH). They can also raise patient satisfaction and improve results by improving communication between physicians and patients.

The bottom line for health plans and sponsors is that telehealth has evolved into a critical component of any care delivery program, critical to lowering health-care costs, improving patient outcomes, and enhancing member and employee satisfaction.

 

 

 

 

Source: https://www.benefitspro.com/2022/05/06/whats-next-for-telehealth/