Experiences from COVID, Use Cases, and Impact

Given the opportunity to quickly prove its efficacy and customer appetite for connecting with care providers virtually, telehealth has more than proven the model works and works well. There is also consensus in the industry that the former regulatory and reimbursement barriers that were rapidly removed during COVID will not go back to the old normal.  Evidence of this keeps emerging with CMS rulings and clarifications that signal this intent.  The question for those in Senior and Long-Term Care who are now looking at their post-pandemic clinical, operational and business environment to make IT strategy decisions is: Where to go next in telehealth and virtual care?

By now, almost all providers have found a way to do virtual visits with the patients and residents they serve.  A first step in evaluating your IT strategy for any purpose is to take a critical look at those solutions and workflows you are using with either a full or a targeted assessment.  If done well, this assessment should provide you with the necessary insight to confidently map out your short and long term plans based on your current state and an inventory of your telehealth and virtual care capabilities.  

This provides the opportunity to determine if you have the capabilities to meet the clinical, technical and operational objectives of your organization.  You can examine if there are ways to optimize what you already have and be well positioned for the future.  

For many organizations the near term objectives include improving access to care, decreasing the cost of providing care and maximizing reimbursement.  Consider if your technology allows you to:

1. Meet the new and increased demands on your infrastructure.  This includes internet, Wi-Fi, connectedness, and the ability to share the needed data through integrations and interoperability.
2. Optimize your processes and workflows.  Consider the operations that can and should be automated.  Explore any additional customization and training that would lead to better performance.
3. Enhance and improve the experience that patients, residents, families, staff and partner organizations have with your organization.  Right now, the expectations are especially high and best practices for communication, feedback and recognition have significantly shifted to include having a strong digital presence.  Many organizations have moved much of their interactions to a digital or even mobile first model and have rounded out their offerings with quality of life and hospitality elements like wellness programming and education, menus and meals, activities and content that adds value.
4. Maximize reimbursement for the clinical services you are providing and plan to provide.  Changes to the way some clinical services can be billed could significantly increase the ROI for adding increased telehealth, RPM and CCM capabilities for appropriate use cases.  Your IT strategy should help you maximize this revenue capture and enable the services that will be provided going forward.

Consider leveraging people with experience and expertise.  Strategic Interests can help your organization with a Telehealth and Virtual Care assessment and strategy.  Please contact Michalene Kinsler at mkinsler@strategicinterests.com to schedule an introductory call. 

Let us help you put the right technology in place so your organization can focus on delivering care to the people you serve.