DIGITAL HEALTH

COVID-19 Likely to Continue Hospitals’ Acceleration Toward Digital Health Care

For Washington State-based innovator Providence, the biggest health care disrupter of all time isn’t Amazon, Google or Walmart. “We really do see it as COVID-19,” said Sara Vaezy, chief digital strategy officer for the health system. “It has catalyzed a lot of the acceleration and trends that we have seen in health care for some time and caused us to rethink how we care for our communities and do business.”

A prime example of this is the hospital field’s rapid embrace of telehealth and other digital tools to continue delivering care in this new reality. While consumers and providers have dramatically increased their use of virtual care because of the pandemic, many signs indicate that this trend will continue long after the novel coronavirus is under control.

Vaezy and colleagues believe the pandemic has exposed the “fundamental flaws of the traditional fee-for-service system,” and they hypothesize this will lead to a value-based market for patients with manageable costs—including dual-eligible patients and Medicare Advantage or managed Medicaid beneficiaries. The commercially insured, meanwhile, would live in an increasingly consumer-driven market in which they bear the cost of their care, she noted.

This will require hospitals and health systems to develop new digital capabilities in risk management, patient-provider matchmaking and navigation, just to name a few.

“With these two markets, there are a lot of things that we need to put in place to ensure that health systems can remain viable and continue to deliver care under these circumstances,” Vaezy said.

“For specific services that payers feel confident can be delivered virtually, they may reimburse both in-person and virtual care at the same lower rate,” the team noted. “As a result of this shift in payment, providers may need to perform five or more virtual visits per hour to generate the revenue they previously earned from three in-person visits per hour, an operational change that is likely to prove unsustainable and accelerate the epidemic of clinician burnout.” In a recent series of reports from Providence’s Digital Innovation Group, experts noted that payers may take the crisis as an opportunity to narrow the payment gap between virtual and in-person care. This could result in downward payment pressure on the latter, making office visits less profitable and spurring greater interest in digital options.

For forward-thinking providers, the counter move will be to leverage virtual visits in new value-based models, according to the report. This requires them to separate themselves from the traditional visit-based 

fee structure, instead using a combination of virtual care and artificial intelligence-based digital interactions with consumers, the report noted.Vaezy and colleagues suggested several opportunities that providers can pursue to address both of these insurance markets. These might include telehealth clinics using competitive, cash-based pricing; digital patient identification and engagement; and steering consumers to less costly sites of care.

Understanding and controlling entry points into the system will be crucial, she noted.

“We talk a lot about a single digital front door, but it’s going to be multiple digital front doors that health systems need to address and be prepared for, not the least of which is Google,” Vaezy said.

Over the next 18 months, the Providence Digital Innovation Group said it anticipates three specific trends to run their course in this space:

• Slowing: Hospitals will see a slowdown in key activities that do not support the “next normal,” such as the building of new physical clinics.
• Acceleration: Providers will see a ramp up of certain technologies that support new care models and this changing payment landscape (i.e., remote patient monitoring).
• Innovation: Brand new possibilities and technologies are likely to emerge that solve problems in completely different ways.

Vaezy believes the greatest opportunity is in the “acceleration” domain and she is already seeing some technologies begin to pick up steam in the second half of 2020. She gave the example of online payment transactions and how Providence is now utilizing several different apps that handle physician matching and other patient needs. The system is now working to integrate all of those into the Providence app to provide a seamless experience for patients.

“It’s not sufficient to just get a digital transaction,” Vaezy said. “It’s also really important to navigate our patients to the right service at the right time in the right location, and—I would add—for their unique needs based on their intent and motivation. Digital navigation is a core part of our model in terms of driving growth, but you also want to be able to engage folks before, during and after care to create a really healthy personalized experience.”

To learn more, you can access a recording/slides of the program, “Pivoting Digital Health and Digital Engagement for COVID-19 and Beyond,” from the recent SHSMD and AHA virtual conference Navigating a New Reality. You can view this recording, plus over 20 other sessions, by purchasing on demand access to this virtual event for $49.  

 

This article features an interview with: 

Sara Vaezy
Chief Digital Strategy and Business Development Officer
Providence
Renton, Washington

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