A Case Study on the Plan and Roadmap for Avera’s Direct-to-Consumer Offering.
Join a webinar hosted by American Well and Avera about Avera’s move to consumer telehealth on June 14th.
Coming in to 2015, Avera Health wanted to introduce a direct-to-consumer telehealth offering to complement its already established business-to-business telemedicine network. Avera Health – based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota – sought to reach outside the brick-and-mortar practice to offer video visits to a population of over 1 million people, over an expansive 72,000 square miles. If you’re a health system considering your own consumer telehealth launch, Avera Health’s goals and roadmap offer guidance for success.
Consumer Telehealth Goals
Avera had support from the highest levels of the organization to pursue consumer telehealth and the team identified three key goals it wanted to address:
- Assist the Avera Health Plan with diverting patients away from unnecessary office-based and emergency room care.
- Create a strong affiliation with Avera primary care providers.
- Attract new patients who lived within the Avera geographic market.
Avera Health sought a partner that could guarantee a solid and successful rollout for its telehealth product and ultimately selected American Well as its partner to power AveraNow, its consumer telehealth service.
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.
Defining the Requirements
Avera was already a uniquely progressive health system within the telemedicine space and had a number of criteria in mind for consumer telehealth success. These criteria included operational requirements like support for multiple use cases beyond urgent care, access via multiple end points such as mobile, web and kiosk and a high quality online care experience. Additionally, Avera wanted to engage physicians while adhering to proper clinical standards and to ensure that the platform fit into Avera’s existing health plan.
Avera and American Well worked together to implement the requirements. They first configured and set up the solution on the back-end to meet critical technical and security requirements, before building a branded application on the front-end.
Communication was key to implementation success. Avera not only had to effectively communicate the new service to consumers within its expansive footprint, but to employees—specifically physicians—within the Avera ecosystem. To garner physician buy-in, Avera’s clinical team worked to set up training and protocols for all physicians.
To effectively reach patients, Avera marketed the service via an integrated campaign which included email marketing, online advertising, a robust remarketing program, local television ads and billboard and a public relations campaign which included print and television. The marketing strategy reinforced the message of innovation within the Avera system at large and drove patient interest.
Early Results
Since launching AveraNow in the summer of 2015, Avera has seen encouraging results, with both enrollments and visits climbing month-by-month. The initial cost savings have also been positive, with an estimated initial net savings of $48 per visit. As AveraNow grows, Avera expects to see further cost savings, particularly as the platform evolves to support additional use cases beyond urgent care.
Future Roadmap
Avera has many short-term and long-term objectives for AveraNow, one of which is to expand the service to cover new use cases. These use cases include:
- Retail Health
- School Health
- Coordinated Chronic Care
- Readmissions Prevention
- Concierge Services
- Behavioral Health
- Oncology
- Pre-and Post-Surgical Follow-up
- Dermatology
This is only the beginning for AveraNow, and if the initial results are any indication, the direct-to-consumer telehealth offering is primed to enjoy tremendous success. To learn more about Avera’s move to consumer telehealth, download the full case study.
