Your Home Your Health

What is telehealth and why should we continue to expand its use and accessibility

Paradigm Shift

A large portion of health care, particularly specialized care is centered around urban areas. Most patients live in on the edge of urban areas and have difficulty travelling to medical appointments. Proposed over 40 years ago in order to reach patients for follow up, telemedicine Telehealth means being able to access healthcare remotely, through a variety of telecommunications ie a phone call, a video conference, interface of self-monitoring devices

The COVID pandemic and associated emergency authorizations put in place brought telemedicine to the forefront. Emergency waivers allowed CMS payment for telehealth across state lines. This is very important for many underserved areas in our country. As an example, Salt Lake City, Utah has a plethora of specialized medical care for catchment area which includes four other states. Prior to emergency waiver, patients who live out of Utah would have to travel to see a specialized practitioner who is licensed in Utah. As you can imagine there is great cost and productivity loss for patients and their care givers.

Technological Revolution

The COVID pandemic not only forced the hand of payors but also accelerated access and utilization of telehealth by all large health care institutions. What was otherwise being slowly adapted became immediately adapted as organizations recognized the shift needed to take care of patients at home.

Who is innovating

One such example is from Geisinger Health Care in Pennsylvania. The Chief Innovation Officer, Karen Murphy, PhD, RN, spoke to Becker’s Health Care News about a new program, ConnectedCare365 (Adams, 2021). ConnectedCare365 revolutionized the traditional chronic disease model, which included case managers following up over the phone or in person. The new system includes consistent monitoring and contact through a communication platform. With this platform, patients can report their systems; parts of vital signs are automatically input with specific devices. The system allows providers to triage patients based on generated data.

There are many potential advantages to an application such as ConnectedCare365. It improves access and data collection. Since it includes patient-reported outcomes, there can be symptom management. Taking care of chronic disease patients from home decreases local health systems, likely leading to less emergency department utilization and led hospitalization. All of these components improve financial toxicities associated with chronic illness.

Policy Plays

Many of the emergency waivers for re-imbursement have ended, which is a good sign because it means COVID is now viewed as endemic instead of pandemic. This may not affect patients and health providers within the same state as much as those who live in different states but the loss of reimbursement structure rolls downhill and has already changed the way most telehealth is done- in that it is not as frequent. In order to better understand the implications please visit:

https://telehealth.org/

This acceleration of policy that allows telehealth is critical to how health care teams follow chronic disease patients. It behooves health care organizations and the federal government to continue telehealth services and access for patients.

References:

Adams, K. (2021). 10 Execs share their systems’ best innovation projects. Beckers Hospital Review. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/digital-transformation/10-execs-share-their-systems-best-innovation-projects-in-2021.html