Interest in telehealth continues to rise in U.S. healthcare organizations. The global telemedicine market is poised to grow to $34B by 2020. Health systems are increasingly incorporating telehealth into their everyday practices.
Telehealth deployments run the spectrum from acute treatment of minor illness, rashes, strains and infections, to more advanced specialty use cases such as cardiology, radiology, mental health, urology, and neurology. Most telehealth deployments aim to address gaps in care such as improving post discharge or post surgical follow-up, but we also see applications of telehealth that expand the geographic reach of specialists or reduce travel burden for home bound patients. As a result, early telehealth deployments look very different from each other depending on specific clinical initiatives, patient demographics, and location.
While there is no universal prototype, we do see that telemedicine initiatives in ACOs are driven by the need to:
Method #1: Expand revenue
ACOs recognize revenue from covered lives, and they keep more of that revenue by keeping their patient base healthy. Telehealth is a powerful tool to increase catchment area, acquire new patients, and provide more touch points to address gaps in care.
Method #2: Engage patients
ACOs see telehealth as a powerful tool to increase access to care and provide more convenient care. Not surprisingly, telehealth results in high patient satisfaction scores and has the potential to improve HCAHPS scores.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Method #3: Save costs
ACOs can use telehealth to protect profits from unreimbursed spend or penalties that can arise from overutilization of the ER or avoidable hospital readmissions. And they can use telehealth to compete with retail clinics, adding or retaining patients without incurring the capital cost of bricks and mortar.
Learn more in our eBook, Why ACOs are Hot for Telehealth, or get a demo of the latest in telehealth at ATA.
