Commercial Integrator March 2023 - 48

Telehealth
The Explosion of Telehealth Services
There's plenty of potential for integrators to profit. The key is to dive into
the nuances of this rapidly expanding category. By Carol Zelkin
FOR MANY YEARS, virtual health services in the U.S. - such
as using videoconferencing technologies - was not widespread.
Medical professionals were concerned about exposure
to litigation stemming from these electronic systems. Well, this
is just another story about how the pandemic has changed the
world, permanently. Medical professionals became concerned
about exposure to viruses, which led to an explosion in the use
of telehealth processes and systems in the U.S.
Key Changes
This acceleration in telehealth led to a number of changes in
the healthcare market. Here are some of them:
○ Increased demand: The pandemic has led to a significant
increase in demand for telehealth services, with patients
seeking to avoid in-person visits to healthcare facilities as a
means of reducing their risk of infection.
○ Reimbursement policies changes: The Centers for Medicare
& Medicaid Services (CMS) and private-insurance
companies, relaxed their rules for telehealth reimbursement.
This allowed more services to be covered and
enabled more patients to access telehealth services.
○ New technologies: To meet increasing demand, many healthcare
providers have adopted new telehealth technologies,
such as virtual-visit platforms and remote-monitoring tools.
○ Growth in telehealth adoption: According to a study by
the Commonwealth Fund, telehealth adoption in the U.S.
increased from 11% in 2019 to 42% in 2020.
○ Expansion of telehealth to rural areas: Telehealth has
been a huge help to those in remote areas, who had been
suffering from a lack of healthcare providers. Indeed, it
helped bridge the gap between rural-area and urban-area
healthcare providers.
○ Changes in regulations: The pandemic has also led to
temporary changes in regulations, such as loosening
restrictions on the use of telehealth in certain settings and
allowing healthcare providers to practice across state lines.
It's important to point out that these represent long-term
changes. The pandemic has accelerated the acceptance and
adoption of telehealth, and it's very likely that these changes
- and many others that we've seen during the pandemic -
will become permanent.
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Commercial Integrator MARCH 2023
So, if you're a technology integrator whose firm has worked
in hospitals and other healthcare environments in the past,
what should you be doing to prepare for these changes to
the space? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. The first step is
to familiarize yourself with the various telehealth platforms
and technologies available on the market. Then, you should
determine which ones best suit your clients' needs.
Key Organizations and Firms
There are a handful of organizations and firms providing services
in this area. What follows are just a few examples:
○ Athenahealth is a company that operates a cloud-based
medical platform that offers a range of services, including
electronic health records (EHR), revenue-cycle management
and patient engagement. It was founded in 1997,
and it's headquartered in Watertown, Mass. The company
provides its services to medical groups, hospitals and other
healthcare organizations.
○ Epic Systems Corp. is a privately held healthcare-software
company that develops and sells EHR software, practicemanagement
software and other healthcare-related
software. The company was founded by Judith Faulkner in
1979, and it's headquartered in Verona, Wis. The company's
flagship product, Epic EHR, is one of the most widely used
EHR systems in the U.S. MyChart is the patient portal for
Epic EHR, and it allows patients to access their health information,
communicate with their healthcare providers and
schedule appointments.
○ Caregility provides telehealth solutions and telemedicine
services to healthcare providers. It provides patientcentered,
interoperable and cost-effective telehealth solutions
to help healthcare organizations improve patient care,
reduce costs and increase efficiencies. The company's platform
is designed to work with existing hospital workflows
and IT infrastructure, and it's able to interface with a wide
range of clinical devices, including cameras, microphones
and vital-sign monitors. Caregility's platform provides a
range of telemedicine and telehealth services, including
remote patient monitoring, tele-ICU, tele-stroke, tele-psychiatry
and tele-rehabilitation. The company was founded
in 2008, and it's headquartered in Morristown, N.J.
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Commercial Integrator March 2023

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