About two-thirds of providers report that telemedicine is a one of their organization’s highest priorities, according to the results from the REACH Health 2016 U.S. Telemedicine Industry Benchmark Survey. That represents a 10 percent increase from the 2015 survey results. 

“Telemedicine decision-making is rapidly moving from individual departments and specialties to an enterprise initiative,” Steve McGraw, REACH Health’s president and CEO, said in a release. “Both hospitals and health systems reported significant increases in the average number of telemedicine service lines which are active or being implemented in concert.”

Though telemedicine programs for different medical specialties vary widely in maturity and clinical application, all service lines studied share a high degree of activity in terms of planning and implementation. Additionally, disparate service lines are united in their top objectives, which are all patient-oriented. Improving patient outcomes, improving patient convenience, and increasing patient engagement and satisfaction are the top three most common objectives for telemedicine programs. 

While telemedicine is becoming increasingly common across service lines and care settings, its growth faces two main factors: reimbursement and limitations of EMR systems, according to survey results.

“Telemedicine reimbursement poses the primary obstacle to success, but EMR-related challenges are persistent and widely noted in the survey,” said McGraw. “There is clearly a high demand in the industry for EMR integration, specifically the two-way flow of individual data elements between telemedicine platforms and EMR systems.” 

Respondents named the following as the top three objectives for their telemedicine program:

• Improving patient outcomes (96 percent)
• Improving patient convenience (87 percent)
• Increasing patient engagement and satisfaction (86 percent)

The survey also examined program attributes and correlated them with success. As uncovered in the 2015 benchmark survey, the degree of focus of the telemedicine program manager was strongly correlated with success. Executive support revealed a significantly higher correlation with success than adequacy of funding. 

Telemedicine programs with a dedicated program coordinator or manager are 43 percent more likely to be highly successful than those with a program manager or coordinator that spends less than half of their time focused on the program.

While executive support and the adequacy of funding can both be correlated with program success, the impact of executive support is more than double that of funding.

“Based on the survey data and our experience working with many providers, it’s not surprising that executive support is so important to telemedicine success,” added McGraw. “Using an enterprise approach, hospital leadership seeks to replicate the well-documented improvements in care across multiple service lines and at affiliated hospitals.”

Read the complete survey.