Payers, providers, pharmacists, pharmaceutical manufacturers:
COVID-19 has spurred a surge of health care providers plunging into telehealth so they can care for their patients while protecting communities from widespread exposure. It’s an unrivaled case study of embracing technology in a breathtakingly short time frame.
Drivers for the rapid adoption include the following:
Typical practice and hospital patient volume has plummeted 35% to 80%. Telehealth is seen as a means to survive.
CMS and some commercial payers have eliminated many of the hurdles of telehealth and its reimbursement issues. Physicians can now work across state borders, and there are new reimbursement codes for telehealth services. Further, many patients do not have a co-pay or coinsurance.
Remote Patient Monitoring reimbursement was put into place by CMS this past January.
The Benefits of Telehealth
Because telehealth mitigates the potential health care barriers of distance, lack of transportation, cost, and a lack of providers, this model will likely become a new normal, particularly for underserved patients, patients in rural areas, and high-risk patients for whom travel may be dangerous.
The telehealth model works especially well with some kinds of chronic disease management—both physical and mental.
While telehealth use had slowly been accelerating for several years, the coronavirus outbreak accelerated its importance and value.
Hospital executives whom we have spoken with anecdotally have said that they believe moving forward, upwards of 50% of patient encounters may continue to occur virtually, even after the end of the acute phase of the pandemic.
As Telehealth Increases, So Does the Use of Aventria EHR Plugins
We here at Aventria hypothesized that providers would see the value of our electronic health record (EHR) plugins and use them during telehealth calls with patients. We recently received dashboard analytics from one of our customers that clearly confirms more users, events, sessions, and page views since the increase of telehealth appointments in April 2020. See the chart below.
“It’s nice to have our hypothesis confirmed, but it’s much more gratifying to know that we’re providing an effective information solution that is supporting disease management to patients and providers during this challenging COVID-19 time.” —Heather Collins, VP, Account Services and Innovation at Aventria Health Group
Other Impacts of COVID-19
To hear about other ways COVID-19 may change health care as we know it, listen to the following relentlesshealthvalue podcasts by our own Stacey Richter:
To learn more about how COVID-19 may change market access in particular, please reach out to:
Dave Dierk, Co-President, 30-year sales and marketing thought leader in pharmaceutical diagnostics, biomedical, long-term care, managed care, employer, and pharmacy communications, at 215-489-9000 x103 or dave.dierk@aventriahealth.com.
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