Benefits of Telehealth for Population Health
By leveraging telehealth as part of a PHM strategy, more timely and convenient care can be provided, especially for those patients undergoing active treatment, and for those with chronic illness, including children with chronic lifelong conditions or rare diseases. An enterprise telehealth platform can be used across numerous departments in order to deliver a range of services to better meet the total needs of the patient by utilizing a variety of types of caregivers.
By deploying the right telehealth platform, as a complement to standard care delivery, providers can more easily and effectively manage health outcomes across a population of patients. With better adherence to treatment plans across an entire episode of care, costly events can be avoided and patients can be sustained at a better status. Among the key benefits of telemedicine for population health are:
Increased Access to Care
Access to Qualified Care
Telehealth allows providers to treat patients in their home and other out-patient settings, thus reducing unnecessary travel time for patients and burdens on caregivers. It allows care managers and health coaches to monitor patients and talk to them about their condition and current status. For patients in long-term care facilities, Telehealth can empower providers to access more timely patient assessments and treatment plan collaboration.
Convenience
Through self-scheduling functionality, patients can search for a specific provider, identify them as a “favorite” and see that provider via a virtual visit at the time of need, without requiring an in-person visit, and while maintaining continuity of care.
Reduced Gaps in Care
By enabling patients to see an in-network doctor without having to rely on scheduled, routine visits, a patient can seek care when it matters most. Patients no longer need to wait for appointments and can seek care for ailments much quicker. This allows certain illnesses and diseases to be caught earlier and treated faster in a less expensive manner.
Improved Patient Engagement and Outcomes
On-demand Care
Telemedicine makes it easy for patients to take advantage of video visits for both urgent care and follow-up care. Providers can use Telehealth for outreach, reminders, and pre-visit planning. Patients can have a routine check-up prior to a procedure, or a standard follow-up appointment after the procedure is complete. In remote areas, getting patients to adhere to recommended visits can be a challenge. Telehealth offers a solution that ensures more patients get the care they need.
Treatment Adherence
Patients enrolled in a population health initiative can utilize self-scheduling and attend virtual visits from home; to be more active in the management of their condition. With an increasing number of medications previously dispensed in the hospital or clinic, but now administered at home, patients and families have the support they need should any issues arise. Greater convenience can mean enhanced treatment adherence, fewer missed appointments, and/or more timely interventions to enhance the patient experience, potentially leading to better outcomes.
Side Effects Management
Virtual visits make it easier for patients to report side effects, or for care teams to engage patients to ensure they are comfortable and to proactively address needs that may arise, such as early management of side effects.
Adjunct Services
The demands on families’ and caregivers’ time can be a roadblock to a complete assessment of, or access to care to facilitate identification, evaluation and treatment of co-morbidities. Virtual visits make it easier to deliver adjunct services such as mental health or nutrition counseling directly to the patient at home.
Collaborative Care
Difficult-to-manage and expensive patient populations often require collaborative care across medical specialties or intensive management by highly specialized teams. Virtual visits can be a complement to visiting nurse and other care programs to provide higher levels of care for the most fragile patients.
Enhanced Efficiency and Reduced Costs
Reimbursement
Payment for virtual care services has improved considerably in the last five years. As of 2018, forty-eight states offer some form of reimbursement for video visits, although every state is different and specific conditions apply and must be accounted for. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia now have parity laws in place that require private insurers to reimburse for video visits, but again, each case is unique. Passed in February 2018 by Congress, the federal budget law includes provisions that significantly expands use of telemedicine for Medicare and Medicare Advantage Plans.
Reduced Urgent Care/Emergency Room Visits
Urgent care and emergency room visits for low acuity conditions are expensive for medical centers and patients, not to mention that significant time is often spent in the patient waiting room. A substantial portion of these low-acuity, single-episode visits for coughs, colds, and other common conditions can be handled via virtual visits at considerably lower cost and greater patient convenience.
Easier Collaboration
Telemedicine makes it easy for caregivers to interact directly with other specialists, or enhance services patients require that may not require an office visit. Pharmacy consultations, dietary and mental health services can easily be delivered remotely providing complete patient support.
Improved Care Coordination
Rather than having a disparate system that doesn’t share visit results or treatment plans, telemedicine can help bridge the gap by coordinating one patient’s needs with all specialists in a single healthcare provider network.
Expanded Patient Base
Virtual services allow hospitals to expand their patient base, providing quality care for more patients across their catchment area, and beyond. And, with virtual visits, patients seek and receive specialty services they may not otherwise have access to.
Innovation
Providers know that improved health and wellness programs can produce long-term benefits for the total cost of patient care. The combination of remote patient monitoring and virtual visits via telemedicine results in timely intervention for patients who begin to show declining health status. With a virtual visit, patients can be assessed in a timely manner and appropriate education or adjustments to treatment plans can be made.
Improved Patient Flow
Introducing virtual visits can reduce travel delays, no-shows and ensures patient contact when needed, enabling providers to gain operational efficiencies. Clinic traffic can be optimized for patients requiring in-person care, so that providers can serve more patients and more frequent follow-ups encounters via virtual care for those who need it most.
The PrimaHealth Telehealth Solution for Population Health Management
PrimaHealth’s Telehealth telemedicine platform is a complete, turnkey virtual medical center that provides all the tools you need to handle your patient populations, from the healthiest to the chronically ill. Our industry-leading digital exam room provides all the tools needed to engage patients in one click and provide continuous monitoring of patients. With advanced capabilities such as multi-party visits and file transfer, the PrimaHealth Telehealth platform allows for real-time, on-demand interventions with patients to deliver convenient and timely care when it matters most.
Key features of the PrimaHealth Telehealth platform for PHM include:
Powerful rules engine for intelligent workflow, with customized rules that can control patient registration and ensure patients are routed to the appropriate provider.
Enterprise-level dynamic scheduling system, enabling appointment scheduling by providers, administrative staff, or directly by patients themselves; true on-demand encounters can be facilitated via a unified patient queue vs. the antiquated, one-dimensional booking-based approach used by others.
Roles and responsibilities tools that let you define all the appropriate provider roles and assign their respective responsibilities, access to patient information, and other capabilities, thereby enhancing regulatory and legal compliance, and leveraging the value of all providers in the practice.
High-definition video for virtual exams that can support multi-participant and/or clinician-to-clinician sessions, enabling timely care and decision-making. This high-quality video experience can also improve intimacy with the patient to enhance the clinical encounter.
A dedicated patient-provider workflow allows patients in tertiary care settings to receive care facilitated by an on-site provider. With this workflow, the on-site provider can determine the type of provider required, and access that provider for the patient, resulting in timely care and reduced patient transportation costs and potential ER visits and hospital admissions.
HD screen sharing enables clinicians to present x-rays, CT scans and MRI images from PACS systems, diagnostic reports, and education materials in real-time to patients or other health care providers as part of a live encounter.
Market-leading compliance adherence and security layers, including HIPAA, HITECH, GDPR and COPPA-compliant software. Combined with complete logging of all transactions, with data available for extract to meet audit requirements.
Robust set of API and SDK libraries to provide integration with third-party systems or development of complementary applications.
