Virtual Care Is No Longer Optional: What’s Now, What’s Next, and How to Get There
HealthLeaders Media – By: Mandy Roth, November 27, 2018. ‘Virtual Care Is No Longer Optional: What’s Now, What’s Next, and How to Get There’
-Telehealth has morphed into a powerful resource that enables the disruption of healthcare delivery.
-An enterprise approach maximizes resources, creates more efficient operations, consolidates workforce, and enables scale.
-Leadership support from the CEO and physician champions are essential to achieve success.
-To circumvent reimbursement issues, virtual care leaders often initiate value-based contracts, secure grants, develop other creative payment solutions and offer free services.
In its infancy, telehealth was a novelty that helped hospitals achieve specific objectives, such as rural care. With the addition of connected medical devices that remotely monitor heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory function, and much more, it has evolved into essential circuitry through which data and communication flow between patients, their providers, and the electronic medical record.
Telehealth is a solution that addresses multiple issues health systems are trying to resolve: patient access, more affordable care, clinician shortages, and geographic disparities. It provides the infrastructure that makes value-based care and population health initiatives work. And, with a shrinking workforce and a growing contingent of elderly patients, it also offers a method to address looming megatrends. This is one of those rare occasions when business strategy coincides with an opportunity to enhance patient care and improve health outcomes.
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