In an environment where consumers are constantly expanding the use of technology in all areas of their lives, healthcare providers are also shifting their services to meet these customer needs. One such way has been virtual care, which has proven effective as a means to expand access and bring greater convenience, while providing quality care and reducing costs.
Virtual care helps increase the efficacy of both in-home and facility-provided management of acute and chronic diseases, promoting efficiency in clinical decision making and treatment recommendations. Technology is not a substitute for excellent clinical care; rather it is a tool which serves to enhance communication and collaboration, ultimately benefiting patients, particularly those in rural and underserved areas.
Virtual care services range from a patient at home interacting with a distant provider for a medical consultation, to the remote monitoring of a patient at home with chronic disease in order to prevent exacerbations, to patients in a hospital or at other facility, who require a specialty clinical consult. Patients can connect via their devices – smartphones, laptops, desktops, etc. – for “on-demand” medical consultation services in areas including urgent care, behavioral and mental health, and other cases with real-time clinical video interaction, often decreasing time and travel for patients.
At Ascension, our focus is to deliver compassionate, personalized care to all, to provide care and support to those we serve when, where and how they want it. Across our national health system, we continue to promote virtual care services that help us expand access to care to those who need it most. We have established a multidisciplinary clinical, technology, marketing and business team focused on implementing services across our system to facilitate collaboration and support capabilities including secure electronic transmission of medical information and operating consumer-oriented mobile apps. We have also implemented a national initiative to deploy virtual care carts in emergency departments and urgent care centers to provide behavioral and mental health consultations quickly and efficiently.
For instance, in one of our Ascension markets patients can visit two kidney transplant telemedicine-equipped satellite outreach clinics, making it easier for them to consult with their transplant surgeons, specialists and social workers for pre-surgical testing and evaluations. Before these outreach clinics, a patient’s experience of traveling to see a specialist could involve hours of travel and related costs. By using these telemedicine-equipped clinics to improve access for patients, Ascension is making it more convenient for those in distant or underserved areas of the state to get the specialized care they need, closer to home.
Virtual care helps save time and money for many people while still providing the highest quality of care. Fortunately, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, close to half of the states in our country have reported initiatives to expand the use of telehealth capabilities in the next two years.
However, one significant barrier to the implementation and expansion of virtual care services is professional licensure. Requirements and regulations on licensing currently vary considerably across states. To remove barriers and provide effective care, states should adopt the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (IMLC), which provides physicians with an expedited process to obtain a license when Compact eligibility requirements are met. Through legislation passed by each state, additional people can have greater access to virtual care services.
Federal laws and regulations also pose a significant barrier to the expansion of virtual care services. To address some of those limitations, Ascension supports the Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act, which would reduce geographic health disparities and promote the use of alternative payment models by allowing more Medicare beneficiaries to access needed healthcare services via virtual care. Providing for greater coverage of virtual care services under Medicare will in turn promote increased access to these services for all patients.
We are committed to virtual care models that allow health systems like Ascension to deliver improved healthcare outcomes, reach those in need who may lack access, and lower the overall cost of care. Healthcare leaders should work with federal and state agencies who oversee virtual care services to enhance and expand access points to care. With the transformation of healthcare to a value-based model, the use of virtual care will become increasingly important in our consumer-driven world.