Health IT, Telemedicine

With Analyte collaboration Teladoc integrates lab tests into telemedicine

Through the partnershipTeladoc physicians can connect patients with an Analyte technician in their area to collect the blood or specimen sample needed to confirm a diagnosis.

telemedicine applications

The recent announcement involving Teladoc, a Purchase, New York-based telemedicine service provider, and Analyte Health, a Chicago-based telehealth lab diagnostics company underscores how telemedicine is coming of age.

The partnership has been billed as a complete integration of doctors, patients and labs in a virtual environment.

The collaboration, which should be in full swing by April, will allow Teladoc physicians to connect patients with an Analyte technician in their area to collect the blood or specimen sample needed to confirm a diagnosis. Results are electronically available to physicians and patients within one to three days.

“It gives us the ability to significantly expand the scope of what we do and do it in a manner that is really convenient for the consumer,” said, Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic.

Analyte will provide lab services for chronic and acute care, behavioral health and preventive health services. Analyte has more than 1,000 locations with sites in all 50 states.

Plans call for expanding services to include in-home testing, which Analyte already does for patients getting tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Home testing involves having a technician come to the patient’s location but is still less expensive than a visit to an urgent care center, Analyte CEO Frank Cockerill, said in an interview.

Teladoc recently announced that it had recorded its 2 millionth patient visit. It also released findings of a study it commissioned that was led by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital researcher Dr. Niteesh Choudhry which found thatthe 2 million Teladoc visits generated a total savings of $900 million to the healthcare system .

That corresponds to an average savings of $472 per visit.

(A 2007 study by the Center for Information Technology Leadership estimated that telehealth technologies in emergency departments, prisons, nursing homes and physician offices could generate annual savings of $4.28 billion. A 2014 study by Barrington, Illinois-based Red Quill Consulting calculated that a telehealth acute care visit saved about $126 per visit with telemedicine services costing $50 versus $175 for in-person acute care.)

While the collaboration greatly enhances their operations, Gorevic said it didn’t represent a merging of the two organizations. He compared it other partnerships that Teladoc has established including those with Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS Health and the CareConnection website it operates with the AARP.

Gorevic also called it a “common misconception” that telemedicine services are aimed mostly at rural or other underserved areas. He noted how Teladoc anticipates 1.4 million to 1.5 million patient visits this year “dispersed through all geographies,” adding that 50 percent of those will be at night or during weekends and holidays.

Common practice calls for requiring physicians who provide telemedicine services to be licensed in the state where their patient is located. A recent survey by the Federation of State Medical Boards found that most states saw telemedicine as the most important regulatory topic they had to contend with.

But both Cockerill and Gorevic were confident that interstate licensing regulations or requirements would not impede their collaboration.

“The regulatory environment regarding telehealth has continuously improved over the last several years,” Gorevic said, noting that – as far as Teladoc’s work with Analyte was concerned – “there are no barriers that we see, either now or on the horizon.”

Others seem to agree.

In response to a request for a “bold healthcare prediction” for 2017, Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO Bernard Tyson tweeted that virtual visits will outnumber in-person visits “w/o losing personal touch.”

Photo: Bigstock

Shares0
Shares0