Support for the classification of telehealth visits makes its debut in the recent release of Cedar Gate’s Value-Based Care Analytics and Healthcare Benefits Analytics (v12.3). This feature is immediately available to current Cedar Gate Analytics clients.
The inclusion of this metric gives users a more detailed and accurate view of trends and variance with respect to virtual vs in-person utilization. For example, clients can access out-of-the-box reports that compare telehealth utilization and the average plan/member cost per telehealth visit against their own book of business (BoB), or Cedar Gate’s commercial BoB which consists of over 11 million member lives. With the power to compare these metrics and surface actionable insights, clients can assess the relative value of telehealth utilization and launch campaigns to educate members on how to access telehealth services. Pre-configured trend and variance summary reports allow clients to analyze the trends and variance in total visit count, unit paid/allowed, and PMPM value for telehealth visits. In addition, clients can easily visualize data with customizable tables, charts, widgets, and dashboards that highlight telehealth-related insights.
Telehealth and virtual care bolstered the US healthcare delivery system during the COVID19 pandemic. It was a way for practices to care for patients (and keep fee-for-service dollars flowing), even as brick-and-mortar exam rooms were closed. As a result, telehealth use skyrocketed. At one point it was projected to be a quarter-trillion-dollar industry.
Now, as the country transitions back to in-person healthcare visits, some say the telehealth boom is poised to bust. According to an article from McKinsey & Company, physicians are “concerned about telehealth’s long-term sustainability”, citing lower reimbursement rates for virtual care and the costs associated with telehealth IT investments. At the same time, telehealth is wildly popular among patients, with 60% of respondents reporting that they choose telehealth for convenience. Most patients also report that they “are much more satisfied with telehealth care vs in-person care.”
As stated eloquently by Gartner in their Market Guide for Virtual Care Delivery, “healthcare providers are shifting from leveraging virtual care as a substitution to in-person care to identifying new virtual care business models and transforming the entire clinical care journey.” In other words, telehealth is another tool for care delivery transformation and should be integrated into the enabling technology mix.
