Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1430054
23 Executive Briefing Despite their general acceptance of telehealth, many clinicians remain hesitant about ramping up virtual care. About half of clinicians (51 percent) continue to cite a preference for in-person visits, and some questions remain about clinical appropriateness. Also, clinicians have uncertainty around reimbursement for telehealth visits after the pandemic. Among hospital and health system leaders, staff resources to implement virtual care is a key barrier, as is reimbursement uncertainty. For health plan leaders, barriers include a confusing telehealth member experience and lack of awareness among members about a plan's virtual care offerings. In addition to clinician hesitancy, reimbursement uncertainty and staffing issues, common to all stakeholders are technology challenges, which have emerged as important pain points. Two major themes are an excessive number of virtual care platforms and lack of integration and interoperability. Excessive virtual care platform. "With urgency at a high [during the pandemic], payers, provider organizations and clinicians all turned to the quickest options available so patients could continue to get care," Sheth said. "The result, however, was 'platform sprawl.'" Amwell's research found that the majority of health plans and providers are using at least three platforms/ systems for virtual or digital care — and more than one-quarter have five or more platforms. "There's an excessive number of systems out there to support virtual care," Hyatt said. "A lot of this was because of decentralized planning during the pandemic." • Lack of integration and interoperability. These disparate virtual care platforms often don't integrate with EHRs, aren't integrated with an organization's workflows and aren't able to share data with other systems and platforms. Many clinicians say that virtual care systems and workflows are not at all or are hardly integrated with their organizations' existing systems. The use of a number of disparate solutions is leading to a confusing and frustrating care delivery system and experience. Stakeholders plan to increase their telehealth investments but want consolidated, integrated solutions Telehealth is now entering its third phase ("Telehealth 3.0"), which can be defined by a shift from pandemic-fueled expediency and sprawl to consolidation, integration and purposeful central planning. During the pandemic, the rapid adoption of telehealth was about speed. Now, as organizations prepare for the future, virtual health investments and decisions require a cohesive vision and a clear strategy. In taking a more strategic approach, the majority of hospitals and health systems (56 percent) are planning to increase their virtual care investments over the next two years. Among health plans, meanwhile, a majority of the plans that don't yet have specific virtual care offerings (such as virtual primary care) in place today intend to add them over the next two years. The primary factors driving telehealth investments are greater patient access, improved patient outcomes, increased patient satisfaction, lower costs and return on investment. "It's critical that health systems and provider organizations are able to streamline the management and support of the technology they deploy for virtual care services. When you consolidate to one system or solution it's much more scalable. It's less resource intensive to support, train, educate, and manage the solution and it's easier to streamline the clinician and patient experiences, Mack said. Key themes and focus areas for telehealth investments center on supporting increased telehealth volume, ensuring a seamless and easy-to-use experience for patients and providers, achieving greater integration and interoperability in terms of workflow and data-sharing, and equipping the organization with a scalable, sustainable enterprise-level digital infrastructure. "The top two things health plans can do to overcome existing barriers are 1) improving member awareness by utilizing marketing strategies that are targeted, that let members know about the benefit and availability of telehealth, and 2) invest in technology where plans can integrate all their different services onto one platform, so that they can easily enable a single, centralized and seamless member experience," said Sheth. The vast majority of hospitals and health systems want a single virtual health platform that is secure, compliant and fully integrated. "Stakeholders broadly agree on the core elements that need to be in place: a streamlined experience for patients and providers, interoperability of platforms as well as data and a nimble, sustainable infrastructure that can support future growth," continued Mack. Conclusion Telehealth is now a critical piece of the healthcare ecosystem. Telehealth 3.0 is about consolidation, integration, interoperability and purposeful planning. It is about having a single, easy-to-use, secure, integrated virtual care platform. "Everyone is operating on multiple virtual health platforms, but what they actually want is a single integrated platform," Hyatt said. "They want to be sure they can see the whole picture of the patient. They want everything to work together . . . this is the promise of one integrated system." This single integrated system is what the key players in healthcare are envisioning, investing in and actively working toward. Hyatt concluded by saying, "At Amwell, we're helping health systems and health plans move from of platform sprawl to a future of smart, streamlined, strategic telehealth growth." n Amwell is a leading telehealth platform in the United States and globally, connecting and enabling providers, insurers, patients, and innovators to deliver greater access to more affordable, higher quality care. Amwell believes that digital care delivery will transform healthcare. The Company offers a single, comprehensive platform to support all telehealth needs from urgent to acute and post-acute care, as well as chronic care management and healthy living. With over a decade of experience, Amwell powers telehealth solutions for over 2,000 hospitals and 55 health plan partners with over 36,000 employers, covering over 80 million lives. For more information please visit www.amwell.com.