Credit Suisse http://www.credit-suisse.com recently hosted a telehealth expert panel. Panelists included David Fletcher, Associate VP of Telemedicine at Geisinger Health System https://www.geisinger.org, Stacy Helsher, System Manager at SSM Health System https://www.ssmhealth,.org, and Rakesh Mehta, Director of Virtual Health at Memorial Hermann Health System https://www.memorialhermann.org.
The experts on the panel see telehealth visits representing close to 15-20% of the overall visits in a post-COVID environment. They believe that as health systems continue to evolve and adapt telemedicine offerings to patients, the figure could move beyond 20%.
As for the near term, when citing the uncertainty over the extent and speed at which the population will be vaccinated, the experts assume that telemedicine will continue to see higher volumes over the next 12 months.
Experts point out that prior to COVID-19, it was a challenge to estimate the percentage of care that could be done virtually due to the lack of data. Additionally, from a regulator and payer standpoint, they saw one of the reasons for the lack of payment and coverage for telemedicine, resulting from the lack of data, but from the providers’ perspective, they were not getting reimbursed for telemedicine since telemedicine was not being advertised or conducted.
However, data is now available on telemedicine visits that were conducted as a result of COVID-19. The experts believe that stakeholders can now look at episodes of care to figure out where telemedicine improves care, or does not make a difference, or where in-person care may be better.
The experts generally agree that the reimbursement environment post-COVID will be a big determinant for future telehealth adoption. Also, as discussed, the argument was made that any pull back on reimbursement is unlikely to cripple telemedicine utilization.
The experts also believe that providers are recognizing the downstream revenue opportunity from a telemedicine visit (i.e.,) referring a patient into the system for higher levels of care, rather than generating the ROI from the initial telemedicine visit).
Discussion took place on several telemedicine platforms. The experts noted a video conferencing tool such as Zoom works fine for strictly video-based connections (Zoom does support the use of peripheral devices but is able to do some of the more advanced use cases).
However, such platforms are unlikely to be seen as a one-size-fits-all type of platform for telemedicine. One expert noted that the industry is still lacking a true enterprise platform in telemedicine (i.e., one platform that can handle all of an organization’s needs.)
In fact, across the entire telemedicine market, flagship platforms (i.e., those platforms used in primary care and ambulatory settings) with the most basic workflows as in most health systems, make up ~65-75% of utilization with the remainder allocated to Teleneurology, Telepsychiatry, and other inpatient settings.
If you want more information or have additional thoughts and ideas, email Jailendra Singh at jailendra.singh@credit-suisse.com or call 212-325-8121.