Use technology to prepare for healthcare's coming shift to value

BOSTON—The new vernacular is healthcare can be challenging even though it’s really just a case of “providers using technology to take care of patients,” said Alan Roga, MD, founder and CEO of StatDoctors, speaking at mHealth + Telehealth World 2015.

StatDoctors lets patients access board-certified emergency medicine physicians via phone, computer or mobile device. Roga said patients are very satisfied with the service. “It allows doctors to be more efficient and patients to get more timely access to care. And, doctors can slow down and ask more pointed questions. In fact, we have had to retrain them because they are so used to checking off boxes.”

To be successful with such services, Roga said they must be treated as a service line with the appropriate resources. Most organizations underestimate those needs.  

Judd Hollander, MD, vice chair of finance and healthcare enterprise for the department of emergency medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, talked about the facility’s JeffConnect, a telehealth service offering video doctor visits via web or mobile app launched earlier this year.

To get physicians’ buy in, the facility requires each physician to do one telehealth visit a month to meet hospital privileges. That is only 20 minutes per physician but adds up to hundreds of hours in telehealth services. They started with virtual rounds, letting patients and their families know what’s going on while they’re in the hospital.  A care provider speaks with them by videoconference. Hollander said about 260 patients have taken up the offer which has “really improved satisfaction for those who want [the service].”

Thomas Jefferson University is expanding its service quickly, Hollander said. They’ve opened two urgent care settings and developed an on-demand care app employees are testing out. They have deals in the works for about 500,000 lives. In the acute care setting, they’re layering on to their critical care network and starting to work on an e-ICU.

“Technology is easy,” said Hollander. It’s everything else that’s challenging. But, the facility decided it was either lose money now in the fee-for-service environment knowing that when the industry shifts to value they would be lights years ahead or stay the course with fee-for-service and hope to be able to spin on a dime when the conversion happens. Some institutions are sacrificing the long term for the short-term dollar, he said. “We’ve decided that there is more time left in the long term so let’s go there.”

In the future, Hollander thinks hospitals will care for just the sickest of the sick. “I have not seen a hospital in the inner city that has excess bed capacity. I can’t grow our business by increasing capacity. We believe we can grow by not building. I think the buildings will stand but healthcare expansion will come outside the four walls of the hospital.”