![]() ![]() Yet many who go to the ER after hours require no emergency services. Unless one is experiencing symptoms of a severe medical crisis-crushing chest pain or half-body weakness, say-the emergency room isn’t the safest place to be, especially when ERs are crowded with Covid-19 patients. Both facts can cause discontinuity in treatment and avoidable errors. Emergency physicians often can’t access patients’ electronic health records, owing to a lack of interoperability between systems, and they don’t offer follow-up care. Those patients face heightened medical risks as well. ER services are 12 times as expensive as visiting a physician’s office and waste more than $32 billion each year, according to a 2019 analysis by UnitedHealth Group. Those who drive to the ER will endure a two-hour wait, on average, along with duplicative testing and wildly inflated prices. ![]() Too often it leaves sick callers and worried parents with a difficult decision: Do I drive to the ER and lose a night of sleep or chance it and wait until morning to call my doctor’s office? “If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.” Many Americans have heard this recorded after-hours script. Opportunity 1: Reduce Expensive and Unnecessary Trips to the ER Power, and internal data from our own organizations, we are confident that full implementation of five opportunities would improve clinical quality nationwide by 20%, increase access to care by 20%, and reduce health care spending by 15% to 20%. Having analyzed health outcomes data from the independent National Committee for Quality Assurance, health plan member satisfaction surveys from J.D. For more than a decade these integrated health systems have used virtual care platforms to improve preventive medicine, care coordination, chronic disease management, and affordability for more than 13 million patients. In this article we take an inside look at two of telemedicine’s earliest adopters and most effective users: Kaiser Permanente, where one of us (Robert) was CEO and Intermountain Healthcare, where the other (Brian) is an executive director of telehealth services. Any nation seeking to raise health care quality, increase access, and lower costs should be expanding, not contracting, the use of virtual care. And Saudi Arabia is implementing a strategy that includes smartphone applications and a network to connect specialized facilities with primary care centers and hospitals in remote areas.īut in many countries, barriers in the form of regulations, payment regimes, and patient acceptance remain. The European Parliament and the European Council recently announced the EU4Health program to spur the sharing of digital health records, e-prescriptions, and telehealth in general. Similar patterns have been seen across Europe and Asia over the past two years, prompting some governments to take actions in support of telehealth. adults and 78% of adults globally who own a smartphone, including those in medically underserved communities.Īnd yet telemedicine usage in the United States has plunged from its peak in April 2020, during the first surge of Covid-19 cases, when it accounted for 69% of doctor-patient visits. It also makes care more equitable and accessible to the 89% of U.S. When used appropriately, it improves patient health and reduces costs. The resulting savings could amount to tens of billions of dollars a year.Ĭontrary to what many people think, virtual health care, also known as telemedicine or telehealth, is much more than a cheap digital knockoff of in-person care. population, could drive such a change by banding together and designing new reimbursement and care delivery approaches. Employers, who currently provide health insurance coverage to nearly half the U.S. And they outline what’s needed to spur adoption to a fully telehealth-driven system. They show how telehealth can reduce expensive and unnecessary trips to the ER, reduce America’s chronic-disease crisis, address disparities in care, make specialty care faster and more efficient, and provide access to the best doctors. Pearl and Wayling take readers inside Kaiser Permanente and Intermountain Healthcare, two of telehealth’s earliest adopters and most effective users in the United States. ![]() Its use has soared during the Covid era-and the authors argue that providers around the world should aggressively strive to tap its full potential even after the pandemic abates. When used appropriately, it improves patient health, reduces costs, and makes care more equitable and accessible to anyone with a smartphone. Contrary to what many people think, virtual health care, also known as telemedicine or telehealth, is much more than a cheap digital knockoff of in-person care. ![]()
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