As 2024 was nearing its end, a group of Telehealth Enthusiasts got together as part of the December Telehealth T-Time meeting to design the future of healthcare delivery.

Kicking off the gathering was the keynote “Re-Designing Primary Care” presented by Telehealth Visionary Dr. Lyle Berkowitz, who advocated for a paradigm shift that leverages telehealth technology, population health strategies, team-based care, and alternative compensation models (e.g., value-based care) to enhance efficiency and access.

Dr. Berkowitz’s ideas set the stage for deeper dives into specific themes during the three breakout sessions:

Telehealth – The Future of Delivering Care at a Distance: This session explored the evolving landscape of telehealth modalities, including video visits, remote physiological monitoring, secure messaging, and digital therapeutics, and their potential to revolutionize patient care.

Hospital of the Future – Digital Health Inpatient Solutions: Attendees discussed the future role of hospitals, envisioning changes in inpatient experiences and the concept of “hospital at home” by 2040.

AI – Intelligent Assistants Providing Actionable Insights: This session examined the potential of artificial intelligence in diagnosing and treating diseases, considering advancements beyond current intelligent assistant capabilities.

The event concluded with a report-out session, where each group shared key insights and innovative ideas, collectively shaping a forward-thinking vision for healthcare delivery. Over the next couple editions of Telehealth Tuesday, we’ll be covering the findings of the three breakout sessions, starting today with telehealth.

The Future of Delivering Care at a Distance

In their discussion on what the future holds for the delivery of care at a distance, the group, facilitated by Ingenium team members Kathy Letendre and summarized by Dr. Matt Faiman, discussed their perspective along five themes:

Balancing Technology and Human Oversight

Starting off the discussion was a general observation that with the advancement of digital health and AI, there is an overall need to maintain a balance between “automagic” technology and human oversight and intervention.

While technology provides powerful tools, its success hinges on workflows that are optimized to take full advantage of the technology and that are optimized to maximize engagement by the clinicians. “The buck stops with the providers,” Dr. Faiman noted, underscoring the need for clinicians to interpret data and make informed decisions.

For the future, here is what is needed to take full advantage of what technology has to offer:

Efficient Alert Systems: Challenges like alert fatigue from technology-generated notifications require systems that prioritize critical alerts without overwhelming clinicians.

Provider-Led Innovation: Clinicians must be actively involved in tailoring technology to real-world applications to ensure its relevance and usability. Without clinician involvement, patients will not reap the full benefits of the technology’s potential.

Data-Driven Actions: While advanced tools can gather vast amounts of data, the value lies in distilling this data into actionable insights. Human expertise is crucial for prioritizing, interpreting, and applying these insights effectively.

Embracing Telemedicine to Solve Workforce Challenges

The changing availability of a qualified workforce presents unique challenges, particularly with younger generations less inclined to work night shifts. Telemedicine offers a promising solution by enabling offsite providers to manage overnight responsibilities, reducing bedside strain while maintaining care quality.

Similar to the revolution created by TeleRadiology in the 1990s (using radiologists in India and Australia for 24-hour coverage), Telemedicine offers 24×7 coverage to all types of qualified specialists at the bedside or at home. The key for quality care, though, still lies in the design of effective workflows and the judicious use of technologies that enable effective care coordination.

Here are some of the additional thoughts by the group on this topic:

Night Shift Reductions: Remote care models distribute workloads more evenly, alleviating burnout. The geographic flexibility of telehealth enables more flexibility in assigning and distributing the work across a larger team of clinicians.

Appealing to New Generations: Telemedicine aligns with younger healthcare workers’ expectations for flexible and tech-integrated roles.

Collaborative Opportunities: Virtual platforms can foster collaboration across regions, bringing specialized expertise to underserved areas. While asynchronous e-visits achieve the same, real-time collaboration enables just-in time “medical grand rounds” to bring the best care to patients.

Simplifying Patient and Provider Experiences

Barriers such as state licensing and cumbersome pre-visit processes complicate video visits. In his summary, Dr. Faiman called for an “easy button” approach to telehealth, simplifying everything from eligibility checks to reimbursement.

Streamlining Onboarding: Automated systems for pre-visit preparation can remove bottlenecks and improve patient satisfaction. Many intake questions can be standardized and easily obtained automatically in a conversation with the patient.

Asynchronous Care Models: Future telehealth should rely more on tools like logic-branch questionnaires and real-time messaging, which can reduce the need for live video calls.

Flexibility in Communication: Recognizing that younger generations often prefer text, email, or asynchronous options over video calls, care delivery models must evolve to meet these expectations.

The Vision for Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)

As RPM technology evolves, devices will become smaller, smarter, and more seamlessly integrated into electronic medical records. However, Faiman cautioned that success will require more focus on engaging patients in managing their chronic conditions.

Here are some trends discussed by the team:

Smarter Devices: Wearables and sensors will likely become less intrusive while offering richer data streams. We will see more and more ambient sensors that no longer require to be worn to collect data.

Behavioral Engagement: Sensors alone cannot drive change; patients need tech-supported or tech-enabled education, coaching, and motivation to act on the insights obtained from the monitoring. Building in human connections is as critical as ensuring data integrity and data privacy.

Preventative Care Focus: While RPM is often used to actively manage severe chronic disease conditions, there is a lot of untapped potential in employing proactive monitoring. The less intrusive and cumbersome the sensors get, the easier it will be to enroll patients in their use, leading to the detection of health issues sooner, avoiding costly interventions down the road.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Telehealth

The group concluded its summary with a vision of a telehealth ecosystem where advanced yet unobtrusive devices, streamlined workflows, and patient-centric tools converge. Here are just a few examples:

Intuitive Interfaces: The involvement of patients and clinicians in the design process is key. Not many people can imagine what it’s like to be a doctor and are usually pretty bad at predicting what they would want when they are older or sicker. Solutions must prioritize user-friendly design for both patients and clinicians.

Integration and Interoperability: A key tenet of quality care relies on access to as much accurate information as possible. While innovation is currently driving siloed data islands, more efforts need to be focused on creating seamless connection between the various digital health solutions and the health records to enhance efficiency and reduce friction in care delivery.

Scalability: In healthcare, a one-size-fits-all approach rarely works. Different practice sizes and specialties have unique needs, requiring tailored and scalable solutions to ensure effectiveness and applicability across diverse healthcare settings.

Balancing Innovation, Usability and Oversight

Overall, the discussion on telehealth and its future underscored the critical need to balance innovation with usability and human oversight. As telehealth continues to evolve, these principles will guide its growth as a meaningful force in modern healthcare. By addressing the challenges outlined above, we can ensure that telehealth remains accessible, efficient, and patient-centered while empowering clinicians to deliver high-quality care.

How do you envision telehealth shaping the future of care delivery? Share your thoughts!

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Christian Milaster and his team optimize Telehealth Services for health systems and physician practices. Christian is the Founder and President of Ingenium Digital Health Advisors where he and his expert consortium partner with healthcare leaders to enable the delivery of extraordinary care.

Contact Christian by phone or text at 657-464-3648, via email, or video chat.