Reach Health, a telemedicine software provider, has released its 2017 U.S. Telemedicine Industry Benchmark Survey. The survey contains results on what top healthcare executives and providers feel about obstacles in implementation and the development of telehealth within their health systems.

The survey includes responses from 436 healthcare providers and professionals from December 2016 to January 2017. Findings cover telehealth priority, objectives and challenges.

Top findings of the survey include:

• 55 percent of all hospitals have transitioned telemedicine programs to an enterprise approach.
• 21 percent of respondents report telemedicine as one of the top priorities of their health system, 30 percent report it as a high priority.
• For the second year in a row, improving patient outcomes (89 percent), improving patient engagement and satisfaction (86 percent) and improving patient convenience (82 percent) remain the top three objectives for telemedicine programs.
• In measuring factors as highly successful, 65 percent reported success in providing remote or rural patient access to specialists, 56 percent reported success for providing 24/7 access to specialists and 55 percent success in improving patient convenience.
• Reducing costs of care remains a top objective for hospitals and contributors.
• Medicare reimbursement, inadequate telemedicine parity laws and Medicaid reimbursement remain the top unaddressed challenges to telemedicine programs.
• All settings and specialties included in the survey reported very high in terms of planning and preparing for telemedicine programs.
• In regard to program attributes correlating to telemedicine programs success, priority of the telemedicine program showed a strong correlation with success. Executive support showed a slight correlation to program success.