Telehealth now and in the aftermath of COVID-19

04/27/20 • 44 min

Gary Austin kicks off the discussion by asking the panel about the massive increased use of telehealth. Guest Brian Bamberger defines what he means by telehealth and the distinction between telehealth and telemedicine. The panel moved on to address rule changes that make the use of telehealth more accessible to everyone. Bamberger acknowledged that telehealth for a long time was adopted to service patients in more rural areas but that moving forward, telehealth can improve accessibility for at risk, mobility challenged individuals in urban areas as well as capacity is built. There is no reason physicians or patients shouldn't continue conducting more routine visits as virtual visits. Jocelyn shared that her municipality, where she is a government official, has leveraged their first responders to do virtual visits for triage and help disseminate information. In the future, remote monitoring, delivering test results and other routine visits can be done virtually. This practice may increase usage overall and potentially increase the number of preventative visits which can help improve outcomes and for certain, generate more data that would be available for analysis. The panel then discussed how to "productize" telehealth in a fiscally viable way. What's pricing? What technology is needed? Will it help reduce medical loss ratios for payers? How does telehealth fit into value-based care? Bamberger makes that point that telehealth will also be critical for the next epidemic or for the second wave of this one. The panel then discussed the risk of fraud and ways to monitor and avoid it. Each panel then shared their closing thoughts on impact, action items and strategies payers and providers should take around telehealth.

Previous Episode

Health IT in a COVID-19 World

Gary kicks off the podcast with introductions. Jocelyn and Ken tell the audience a little about their background and expertise across the healthcare industry and health IT. Jocelyn explains that Point-of-Care Partners is an objective consultancy with a "Switzerland" status. Gary leads the discussion by introducing the key topics covered by the news non-stop like availability and production of COVID tests, delays in lab results, shortage or personal protective equipment like masks, mass immunizations while looking at all these issues from a health IT perspective.

Then the panel focused on the opportunity for positive change coming out of the pandemic starting with telehealth. As patients and physicians have embraced telehealth as a lifeline during COVID-19, will this stick or will patients and physicians go back to doing things the old way or will there be profound transformational effects?

What about Interoperability and standards? Jocelyn provides her perspective on whether this crisis will be the impetus for an acceleration of new use cases or will the industry be forced to use old tools they never bothered to pick up before?

The panel then moves on to discuss the crucial role of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) and Public health and liquid data flow that needs to occur during a pandemic and beyond.

The panel then tackles whether work on streamlining and automating prior authorization will slow down during the pandemic or is it more important than ever?

Audience reminded they can submit topic and guest ideas by emailing [email protected]

Next Episode

Part 1: Health IT and the Law

Gary Austin kicked off the podcast by introducing Ken and Jocelyn who provided their opening comments on the ONC and CMS rules, information blocking and telehealth. Gary then introduced David Szabo before kicking off the discussion around the CMS & ONC Rules where they discussed how much enforcement teeth these rules carry and the opportunities for innovation for forward thinking organizations.

The discussion then moved to information blocking where the group discussed why it may matter if an organization inadvertently blocks information because they don't understand the regulations versus organizations which may blatantly block information. There are implications not only for health IT companies but for payer and provider organizations. The group then moved to discuss the implications for patients when they consent to their clinical information to be shared with a 3rd party app outside of the protection of HIPAA. This is especially important because most consumers don't read the 10 page agreements they need to "consent to" before using an app.

The group then tackled the explosion of use of telehealth which may have been an operational challenge for some providers. In the midst of COVID-19 there are waivers, relaxation of the site of practice and mandated reimbursements levels which may change once the pandemic wanes. With claims going up by as much as 1000% in some areas, there is also a huge risk for fraud.

Look forward to Part 2 which covers price transparency and pick up the conversation around data privacy issues that may arise due to information blocking regulations and the priorities organizations should put on complying with new rules and regulations and developing interoperability roadmaps and agreements.