Telehealth News and Market Developments
Stat News: Telehealth companies are testing the waters with taking on more risk (1/13) – A handful of telehealth companies are dipping into payment systems that reward them for keeping patients’ costs low and penalize them for overspending — a potentially risky move for companies still finding financial footing, but one that could win them favor with large health plans and employers. These companies are negotiating new contracts that give them a bigger financial stake in patients’ care. These types of contracts are a departure from fee-for-service, a system that has long been a mainstay of both brick-and-mortar medicine and telehealth.
Managed Healthcare Executive: Telehealth Grows, but Medicare Has Woes (1/13) – Cost pressures may increase as the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund runs low, but the reliance on telehealth that the pandemic brought is likely to continue, especially for mental health services. Experts have predicted that the health care system will continue to add more telehealth to the delivery system, particularly for those needing mental health and substance use disorder treatment. Physicians, hospitals and health systems need to demonstrate with data that they are doing more to diagnose mental health issues earlier and to assess patients’ progress while in treatment.
Cerner: Digital health and patient safety (1/13) – Patient safety is a health care discipline that has emerged out of a similar concept of avoiding harm to the patient. When done correctly, Health IT can address key areas of patient safety concern, particularly those relating to medication safety, diagnostic errors, and communication issues. Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) has been shown to reduce medication-related errors. Health information exchanges (HIE) can enhance patient safety by establishing more effective communication methods.
Stat News: Telehealth experiments & the latest digital health news from JPM (1/13) – A handful of virtual care companies are entering into new contracts that reward them for keeping patients’ cost low and penalize them for overspending — a model known as risk-sharing. It’s a departure from the traditional “fee-for-service” billing process, and a move companies hope could help them get paid for the services they offer in addition to virtual doctors’ appointments, like in-app messaging, medication reminders, and digital health coaching.
Stat News: Trusting relationships are the core of medicine. Can telehealth support them? (1/12) – A number of promising new digital health companies have surfaced in the past two years, prompted in part by the demand for telehealth visits that soared in the first wave of the pandemic. The vast majority of these efforts will likely end in costly failure because they ignore the central role of trust in health care. However, digital health modalities like telehealth can be seen as force multipliers that extend and strengthen the trusting relationships that are at the core of medicine.
Forbes: The Future of Healthcare Technology (1/11) – Telehealth has made it possible for patients to receive care without an in-person office visit. In addition, remote patient monitoring is becoming more widely accepted. Having exponentially grown in popularity throughout the pandemic, this now includes wearable technology with impressive capabilities, from remote monitoring of vitals to remote echocardiograms. Looking ahead, it’s essential that the health care industry remains focused on one common goal — ensuring that everyone, no matter personal circumstances, has access to high-quality and highly affordable care. Advanced technology, made even more powerful by increased mobility, will make this a reality.
Health Care IT News: NorthShore uses telehealth to take vitals and examine heart, lungs and ears from afar (1/11) – The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the use, value and importance of telehealth and remote patient monitoring services. But there were obvious limitations in the ability to obtain certain physical exam findings that are necessary to providing accurate diagnoses. NorthShore University HealthSystem has been successful in implementing a technology that allows patients and their families to obtain medical care for certain acute symptoms in their home. In partnership with TytoCare, the health system leveraged a handheld device that allows clinicians to listen to the heart and lungs, and provides the ability to visualize the throat, eardrum and skin, to allow for remote physical examinations and to take vital signs.
News Medical Life Sciences: Telemedicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine enables a stroke patient to be treated with high level of care (1/11) – Johns Hopkins Medicine has conducted more than 1.2 million telemedicine visits for patients across the nation since the pandemic began. One-fifth of the telemedicine visits in 2021 were for "telemedicine sensitive" ambulatory care, which has enabled diagnoses for conditions such as strokes, and has allowed providers to set patients up with treatment plans for their conditions. Telemedicine visits accounted for between 17 percent and 30 percent of all patient appointments per quarter at Johns Hopkins Community Physicians in the first three quarters of 2020.
Health Care IT News: How communities can better prepare for post-emergency telehealth deployments (1/10) – Communities face increasingly destructive unnatural disasters, such as catastrophic forest fires and earthquake fears on the West Coast. Telehealth disaster solutions are an inexact science, but there are plenty of component parts that can make powerful solutions. Next year, the federal government is unleashing billions for broadband, telehealth and health care, so now is a good time to formulate some telehealth- and broadband-driven disaster-recovery strategies while there's money, even as pilot tests.
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