A Missed Opportunity For Telemedicine Vendors

Today, most direct-to-consumer telemedicine companies operate on a very simple model. You pay for a visit up front. You talk to the doctor via video, the doctor issues as a prescription if needed and you sign off. Thanks to the availability of e-prescribing options, it’s likely your medication will be waiting for you when you get to the pharmacy. In my experience, the whole process often takes 45 minutes or less. This beats the heck out of having to wait in line at an urgent care center or worse, the emergency department. But what about caring for chronic illnesses that can’t be managed by a drive-by virtual visit? Can telemedicine vendors play a role here? Maybe so. We already know that combining telemedicine with remote monitoring devices can be very effective. In fact, some health systems have gone all-in on virtual chronic care management. One fascinating example is the $54 million Mercy Virtual Care Center, which describes itself as a “hospital without beds.” The Center, which has a few hundred employees, monitors more than 3,800 remote patients; sponsors a telehealth stroke program offering neurology services to EDs nationwide; manages a team of virtual hospitalists caring for patient around-the-clock using virtual visit tools; and runs Mercy SafeWatch, which the Center says is the largest single-hub electronic intensive care unit in the U.S. Another example of such hospital-based programs is Intermountain Healthcare’s ConnectCare Pro, which brings togethe...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Connected Health Digital Health EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare AI HealthCare IT mHealth Mobile Apps Patient Home Monitoring Payers Population Health Population Health Management Telemedici Source Type: blogs