We are entering a new era of virtual care. It’s an era that promises true innovation and tremendous benefits to patients and healthcare providers alike. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the telehealth field made huge advances in both access and delivery. This growth occurred so quickly that concepts recently thought of as cutting-edge are now commonplace.
Here’s a look at how video visits with healthcare providers are markedly different from comprehensive virtual care services.
During the pandemic, many leaders in the healthcare field adopted telehealth as an emergency measure. That was smart because serving patient needs was crucial, and with the regulations lifted, two-way video conferencing quickly met immediate requirements to safely deliver patient care.
With some normalcy now returned, healthcare organizations are learning that their move to a video conferencing-only solution isn’t enough. Regardless of what platform you choose to deliver video visits, your care team has learned a lot over the past 18 months. Top among these learnings is that two-way video solutions don’t have the dynamic features of an integrated, end-to-end virtual care solution.
There are many differences between video visits and virtual care.
Virtual care is a comprehensive set of end-to-end capabilities that work together to enable seamless remote care delivery. Video visits are just one stage in that overall process. Virtual care connects every step in the patient’s holistic journey: scheduling, intake, care coordination, the video visit itself, ePrescribe, and discharge, including sophisticated reporting and analytics. Virtual care has the power to reduce friction points and enhance clinical workflows while improving patient outcomes, reducing costs and boosting revenue.
The eVisit Research & Insights Team has analyzed the differences between, and business impacts of, video visits and virtual care. The above infographic details the significant disparity — especially the friction points that healthcare organizations encounter as they marry the myriad of “non-virtualized” physical steps — and the many team members needed to conduct a single video visit for just one patient.
These non-virtualized steps actually take as many as eight practice team members to navigate and transact the video visit process. With video visits, there are multiple software programs and interfaces in play. These include the practice management suite, electronic health record (EHR), and two-way video system, as well as the many team members who are phoning, emailing, texting, diagnosing, adjudicating, billing, charting and prescribing.
A unified platform that seamlessly virtualizes every step in the clinical workflow process lets the provider and care team deliver quality patient care from start to finish. Patients can self-serve along the way, better engaging in their own care with a superior and user-friendly experience.
Ultimately, a video visit entails 133% more steps, hundreds of clicks and more labor hours. Our data shows that using an end-to-end solution such as eVisit saves time and labor costs while delivering a higher gross margin per visit: 75% vs. 33% with a two-way video visit solution.
Gartner’s “2020 Market Guide for Virtual Care Solutions,” in which eVisit is one of 20 representative vendors, calls for virtual care to demonstrate five critical capabilities:
Health providers are to be commended for the way they initiated video visit capabilities during the pandemic. The clear direction of the market is building on that momentum and moving toward system-wide virtual care services that can enhance clinical efficiencies and profits while keeping patients at the center of care through improved outcomes.
Learn more at eVisit.com.
