What’s Next for Telemedicine?

Predictions and trends for telemedicine in 2016 were the focus of a February webinar hosted by Kerrie Hora, director of business development for Avizia, a provider of telemedicine platforms. The guest speaker was Jay Sanders, MD, considered by many the “father of telemedicine” for his decades of work developing the concept. Sanders is adjunct professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group; and founding board member and president emeritus of the American Telemedicine Association.

Key points included:

• ACOs, seeing the impact and advantages telemedicine has had on one or two specialties within their organizations, will implement telemedicine to other specialties and disciplines.

• Direct-to-consumer home care will be driven by consumer demand, and new provider benefits will be understood and acknowledged. Benefits will occur from dramatically reducing readmissions post discharge and making virtual visits for the chronically ill in the home.

• U.S. academic medical centers will begin expanding overseas to increase access to an ever-growing demand from patients and will develop more affiliations with other such centers around the world.

• Telepharmacy is expanding. It is dramatically reducing complications from interactions of multiple prescriptions.

One issue centered on why telemedicine is gaining momentum now. Sanders pointed out that the technology is the same today as it has been, but prior to the Affordable Care Act and the new focus on quality vs. quantity, there was no impetus for hospitals to provide telemedicine home care, because if a patient was readmitted, hospitals were paid for the readmission. Now they are penalized, and while CMS doesn’t pay directly for home telemedicine visits, it makes sense to provide those visits to prevent readmissions.

“The exam room is becoming where the patient lives and works; not in the doctor’s office,” says Sanders.

Internationally, Sanders sees the developing world leapfrogging the U.S. in the use of telemedicine. He says other countries will get to the appropriate endpoints quicker than we will because they don’t have any choice.

“They have the information to do it with their smartphones. Given all the capability and functionality in their phones, they aren’t going to be burdened by inability to change. We are burdened by our resistance to change,” he said.

Sanders points out that we have adapted to all of the other changes brought about by our service industries. Entertainment is streamed, food is brought to us, we shop and even bank online. “The biggest service industry in the United States is the healthcare service industry,” he says. “What telemedicine is doing is bringing the healthcare delivery system directly to the consumer, and that is one of the most critical aspects of the telecommunications industry.”

Related information:

• 3 Ways Telemedicine is Changing Healthcare: https://healthleadersmedia.com/page-2/TEC-324698/3-Ways-Telemedicine-is-Changing-Healthcare;

• American Telemedicine Association: https://www.americantelemed.org/;

• Avizia website: https://www.avizia.com/. 

To view the entire webinar go to https://www.avizia.com/news-events/.