Credit Suisse https://www.credit-suisse.com as part of the Healthcare Disruptive Technologies & Innovations Series, hosted Iris Berman, Vice President of Telehealth Services at Northwell Health https://www.northwell.edu for a virtual meeting with a small group of investors.
Northwell is primarily working with two main telehealth vendors that includes Philips (for their eCareManager for teleICU) and Amwell. However, the health system does have a small contract with Zoom as a backup plan. Northwell has also contracted for Zoom’s HIPAA compliant healthcare product within their behavioral health service line.
Ms. Berman buckets Northwell’s telehealth approach into three different areas 1) Pre-hospital care, 2) Acute care which is in-hospital or in-clinic care, and 3) Post-acute/ambulatory care. On the pre-hospital and post-hospital sides, the health system leverages Amwell while the acute care component is largely hybrid.
As Northwell’s telehealth programs and strategy has evolved, the health system pushed having Amwell serve as a key vendor across multiple telehealth programs to provide clinicians with a sense of consistency across the health system.
As a result, Northwell began purchasing a large number of Amwell telemedicine carts deploying them into all of Northwell’s emergency rooms and transitioned the health systems’ telestroke program to the Amwell platform (previously conducted using Philips). In fact, COVID accelerated the transition completely to Amwell for everything except teleICU consults and teleICU care. Amwell is also now integrated into Northwell’s scheduling and billing systems.
Northwell reports that the number of providers using telehealth on the Amwell platform jumped from 100-200 to over 7K within a span of four weeks. As for telemedicine visits, the health system saw the figure jump from a couple of hundred telehealth visits annually pre-COVID to 8-10K visits per day at the peak of COVID.
Northwell leveled off in the summer and began to average 1.2K telehealth visits per day during the weekdays, however, Northwell had nearly 1.6K telehealth visits on Thursday January 21. Ms. Berman explained that could have been caused by the tail end of a second surge. Consistent with other estimates, including analysts at Credit Suisse, Northwell is looking for 20-30% of all visits remaining in telehealth in some facet, post COVID.
As for the Amwell partnership, Northwell has an enterprise license contract with Amwell to enable Northwell employed physicians to use the platform. The contract is based on a flat fee for the use of Amwell’s software if another 10 physicians are hired by Northwell. Northwell would not have to pay any additional fees (e.g., software licensing fee contracting structure, opposed to a per-provider licensing fee).
Northwell currently leverages their own providers and does not utilize Amwell’s provider group (AMG) for any of their telehealth visits. Even during the initial peak of COVID in 2020, Northwell did not have to rely on AMG to provide backup care for telehealth visits. Northwell however, did partner with Providence for a short time (~2 weeks) to support Northwell’s pop-up ICUs.
For more information, ask questions, or to provide feedback, email Jailendra Singh at jailendra.singh@credit-suisse.com or call 212-325-8121.