Camille Baxter:
Hello, and welcome to Healthcare Insider, a sponsored content podcast series from Modern Healthcare Custom Media. I'm your host, Camille Baxter. And today we are speaking with Jason Gorevic, the chief executive officer at Teladoc Health. Since taking the reins in 2009, Jason has led Teladoc Health to its position today as the world leader in virtual care, achieving significant growth in revenue, membership, and telehealth utilization. Today, we are talking to Jason about how consumer expectations around virtual care are evolving and how a unified virtual first experience will support better patient outcomes and greater care coordination. Before we dive in, we'd like to thank the sponsor of this episode. Teladoc. Teladoc Health is the global leader in whole person, virtual care, offering the technology to connect, expertise you can trust, and the power to improve health for all. Jason, thank you so much for being here today. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
Jason Gorevic:
Camille, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited for the conversation and looking forward to it.
Camille Baxter:
Well, great. Then let's jump right in. Teladoc envisions a virtual first healthcare environment. Why in your opinion, is that the best path forward?
Jason Gorevic:
Camille, we really believe in taking care of the whole person in a virtual first environment because ultimately that's what consumers want. From our own research, about 76% of employers say that they've accelerated their virtual care offerings. And we know that 70% of organizations plan to have a whole person virtual care strategy in place in the next three years. Virtual first health plans create alignment and financial incentives between what consumers and their plan sponsors want, and the financial structure of a health plan design that focuses them on using virtual environment as a front door to healthcare.
Camille Baxter:
Jason, can you talk a little bit about what virtual first healthcare looks like for the consumer and how do you imagine them using virtual care?
Jason Gorevic:
People today are really accustomed to living in a digital first world and that's true for all parts of their lives and more and more it's true for their healthcare. We've seen a quantum leap in consumer behavior that came with the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. And it's just accelerated since then. Your virtual first healthcare has a particular emphasis on the primary care physician, as the quarterback for healthcare who develops a long term longitudinal relationship with the member, as opposed to an on-demand sort of virtual care relationship that's more urgent care oriented. We believe strongly in that longitudinal relationship, but also bringing together both digital assets as well as a full care team of virtual providers to take care of the consumer that can also connect them to the ultimate sort of physical delivery system in the event that they need to get care in person.
Camille Baxter:
Talking about that unified experience where disparate parts of the healthcare ecosystem are brought together for the patient. What does that look like? And why is that important to achieve a virtual first healthcare system?
Jason Gorevic:
If you think about chronic care, for example, people living with chronic conditions don't live in silos that are defined by those chronic conditions. The majority of individuals living with one chronic condition also live with or at risk for other chronic conditions. And having multiple chronic conditions is rising at an unprecedented rate, nearly tripling in the next decade. Frequently, that's accompanied by mental health challenges, such as anxiety or depression, issues that get in the way of people really changing their own consumer behavior and living their healthiest lives, whether that's exercise, or diet, or medication adherence. And a unified experience gives the right care at the right time, through both connected devices, self-care, expert coaching support, and physician based care to ultimately integrate both mental and physical health and result in the greatest outcomes at the lowest cost for the consumer. So when we talk about a unified experience, it's bringing together all of those multidisciplinary approaches in a way that's very personalized for the consumer.
Camille Baxter:
Taking that a little further, what signals do we have from consumers that they're ready for a virtual first healthcare landscape?
Jason Gorevic:
Well, we're seeing it every day today, as we continue to set new records of virtual visits, interactions with our chronic care solutions and people coming to us for virtual mental healthcare. Further, our research shows that consumers openness to virtual care continued to grow throughout 2021. At the beginning of 2021, it was about 68% were open to virtual care. And by the end of the year, it was over 70% at 71% of people saying they were really interested in pursuing virtual care because it's more convenient, it's healthcare on their terms, and it's the ability to establish a longitudinal relationship, which is really absent from most people's lives today.
Four out of five adults don't have a strong relationship with a primary care physician and they're leaving that because the traditional primary care experience doesn't meet their expectations. It lacks ongoing whole person support. It's very transactional. It is fraught with navigational challenges. There's limited transparency into quality and cost and visits are inconvenient and rushed. With our primary 360 product, it offers the average new patient visit, a first visit that's over 50 minutes long and we get to match them with a provider whose most likely to be right just for them, not who their colleague at work recommended because they've had a good experience, but rather the provider who is tailored to their needs and going to be available with a full care team on demand.
Camille Baxter:
Yeah, it really does go in the direction of matching a lot of the things that consumers want from the standpoint of their lifestyle. So where are healthcare providers in the journey to virtual first healthcare? And what barriers are you seeing that are currently standing in the way?
Jason Gorevic:
Yeah, I think we've seen a significant shift over the last couple of years. We had early adopters who were leaning in, in 2017, 18, 19, but as we saw things change and providers eyes opened up quite frankly, to the power of virtual care for all kinds of different specialties. I really believe that the seat has changed in terms of provider adoption and embracing a virtual care as an integral part of the care delivery model. Healthcare providers see the value in an enterprise wide virtual care strategy. 60% of hospitals and health systems are planning to implement a telehealth program across all acuity levels and care locations. And I think the environment is fostering that. Reimbursement is changing regulations and electronic health record integrations are cited as the most difficult barriers to telehealth advancement, but we're really seeing that change significantly with the public health emergency. And a lot of those changes are sticking and I believe will become part of the long term fabric of our healthcare system. And providers are adapting and adopting virtual care accordingly.
Camille Baxter:
As you think about our discussion, do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to share?
Jason Gorevic:
It's always been Teladoc Health's vision to take care of the whole person in a virtual environment that takes advantage of digital assets, relies on a wealth of underlying data and data science to improve the care experience. And wraps the consumer with a multidimensional care team that is deeply integrated with all of that data, such that we can bring the consumer personalized recommendations and personalized care that is quite frankly, just a new way of accessing a better experience and delivering better outcomes.
And there's nobody better positioned than Teladoc Health to be able to do that at scale. We do it both here in the U.S. and around the world in a way that takes advantage of the fact that people see themselves as a whole person with chronic conditions and acute episodic needs, with mental healthcare needs and physical healthcare needs. But all of those are related to each other. And what we're doing is simply integrating all of those capabilities into that unified experience. And we're seeing tremendous results from consumers with net promoter scores in the mid-70s for our primary 360 product and people telling us that it is the way healthcare should be delivered, not the way it historically has been.
Camille Baxter:
Yeah. Before we go, I'd like to shift gears a little bit. Can you tell me how you have grown as a person or a leader through your time at Teladoc?
Jason Gorevic:
Well, I started here 13 years ago. The company was about 30 people and doing $4 million a year in revenue. We've changed a lot since then. We have about 5,000 employees all around the world. We'll deliver somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million visits on an annual basis. And the company will do about two and a half billion in revenue this year. So there's been quite an evolution, but I think the most interesting things have come in those times of rapid change, like at the beginning of the pandemic, when we had to react to the fact that all of a sudden the switch flipped and people were looking to us as the only mechanism for them to get care when everything closed down around them. And it's gratifying to see our team adapt and react to those needs of consumers in such a rapid fashion and be able to innovate, to deliver real value for the market. And so it's nice to see our vision come to fruition and really see the market catch up to what we've always believed is a better way to deliver healthcare.
Camille Baxter:
Yeah. Wow. Thank you for your time today, Jason. This has been a great conversation and I appreciate you taking time out of your day to tell us more about Teladoc and telehealth.
Jason Gorevic:
Camille, thanks so much for the opportunity. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Camille Baxter:
This has been a sponsored episode of Healthcare Insider created in collaboration with Teladoc Health. For more information about Teladoc, visit Teladochealth.com. I'm your host Camille Baxter. Look for more episodes of Healthcare Insider at modernhealthcare.com/podcasts or subscribe at Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcaster. Thanks for listening.
