Telehealth strategies are being developed to help rural and urban populations to get access to better healthcare facilities. Telehealth can refer to virtual visits and other consumer-facing digital interactions, or remote video consultations between two healthcare providers to share expertise. Patients desire access to telehealth for varied reasons. But in most cases health systems are still trying to understand where it fits into their overall strategy and budget.
Key issues in telehealth today were discussed during a session titled "Key Innovations in Telehealth, Mobile Health and Technology in Health Systems" at the Becker's 5th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago.
These are the five key takeaways:
Health systems don’t need to innovate in all areas of telemedicine and telehealth at once. Initially they can focus on a select patient population, such as pediatric patients or behavioral health. They can later develop policies and pilot programs on a small scale before rolling out to other patients.
Telehealth is bound to become an important part of a health system’s care delivery strategy as they take on more risk. Systems are looking two to five years into the future to craft the governance and buy-in from top down so that when the system takes more risk and/or owns it’s own insurance contracts, telehealth will become a part of an effective strategy to improve care delivery at a lower cost.
States define telehealth differently for reimbursement purposes. Thus, it is vital to know what the state regulations are to ensure your telehealth program is successful if it includes a Medicaid component.
In some cases, telehealth initiatives may not lead to cost-savings or bring revenue. But they can lead to patient satisfaction. Some patients would like to go for virtual visits than travel to the hospital or physician’s office.
Telehealth platforms can have biases, including a user-centered design that is more convenient for certain demographics on the patient side or certain specialties on the clinician side.