Telemedicine was fundamental to the resilience of patient care during the pandemic and record-breaking investment in digital health fueled the rapid growth of new modalities of care coupling high-quality digital technology with team-based approaches to care. Recently, questions have been raised about the future of telemedicine in the post-pandemic world and the robustness of digitally driven approaches to care given stagnating investment. But results of a new national study revealed that over 90% of healthcare buyers and employers see virtual care as a high priority in the coming three to five years.

This finding is a strong mandate for a redoubling of efforts to deliver virtual care approaches that redefine the healthcare value chain. As our healthcare system continues to struggle with unsustainable costs, inequitable outcomes, and a clinician staffing crisis, we must prioritize virtual care approaches that move beyond our current system that rewards care delivered only after a patient presents as sick in a clinic, driving toward a virtual-first future that prioritizes keeping people healthy and out of hospitals and clinics.

We must use hybrid approaches that optimize in-person, synchronous, and asynchronous care modalities that build engagement, trust, and confidence, focus on the most productive interventions, and extend our current clinical workforce while ensuring their satisfaction. We must advance a digitized approach to healthcare that simplifies patient and provider engagement by using integrated platforms that improve the user experience for all.

Virtual first care (V1C) – high-quality healthcare delivered virtually until it cannot be – will allow both new and incumbent providers to achieve success in the redefined value chain. By offering synchronous and asynchronous interactions between clinical teams and patients, leveraging biometric and other sensor technologies to share real-time data across all members of the care team, personalizing approaches to optimize every patient’s care journey, and embracing an interdisciplinary approach that includes specialists to provide comprehensive and long-term care, a virtual-first approach to healthcare will allow us to reshape our ability to provide care for people centered on their needs rather than the healthcare system – all people, in the digital era.

The five steps to delivering V1C that redefines the healthcare value-chain 

1. Expand buyers’ limited view that virtual care is ‘just’ telemedicine

The broad experience of ‘bolt-on’ telemedicine during the pandemic fundamentally changed capabilities and expectations of care. The infrastructure and experience now exist to continue to deliver supplemental virtual visits. However, to realize the full potential of virtual care, we must help educate buyers on the comprehensive value – beyond ‘just’ dollars and cents – that V1C approaches can deliver. The current limited view of virtual care as ‘just’ telemedicine will dampen enthusiasm for true transformation.

2. Extend virtual offerings beyond the successful disease state ‘landing points’

The 92% of buyers that already have a virtual offering for one condition are likely offering it in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mental health, or weight management. Despite the demonstrated value of these offerings, healthcare systems and purchasers are experiencing widespread ‘point solution fatigue’. We must move beyond the patchwork of individual solutions to a fully integrated virtual first approach that delivers value by moving beyond engagement to deliver better outcomes, fully personalizing care to meet patients where they are when they need us, and enabling data integration across providers.

3. Insist upon equity by design

V1C offers the potential to reduce costs, improve access, and provide a more personalized experience for patients. This value can be captured with commensurate improvement in equity, but this will not happen by accident. As we reimagine what it means to care for people using digital technologies, equity is non-negotiable. This requires that V1C providers consider equity and inclusion at every step of designing their care solutions, contemplating each part of the tech stack. It demands that we keep front of mind that V1C is the seamless integration of fit-for-purpose digital technologies with optimized care teams. Optimized care teams are well-trained and prepared to deliver culturally competent care to every patient and care teams themselves should be diverse and better represent the patients our industry exists to serve.

4. Deliver solutions that deliver returns over and above hard ROI

Healthcare innovators must advance V1C models that drive a shift in mindset and practice from the “sick care” system we have today to a true healthcare system. We need improved engagement by patients, providers, and systems to diagnose earlier and treat smarter. We need models that integrate data and encourage data sharing across providers and personalization that leverages all of the tools in the digital health toolbox to meet patients where they are when they need us. No longer should our healthcare system be measured by how well we perform once a patient presents, sick, at the doors of the clinic. Our goal should be to keep people out of the hospital and away from the clinic, free to live the life they chose unencumbered by their medical conditions.

5. Harness the power of visionaries

Innovative purchasers of healthcare are far ahead of the pack. These employers, payers, and consultants view V1C as the future model of care for most situations and are supporting and enacting policies and programs to this end. These visionaries are primed for innovative partnerships that will become the new norms of the future. This is where we must focus on the delivery of new solutions to deliver the proof points being demanded of our industry and position ourselves to demonstrate the transformative potential of V1C as measured by multiple value metrics.

Telemedicine is a visit focused on managing sickness, V1C is a journey pursuing health. In the face of unsustainable costs, inequitable outcomes, and the clinician staffing crisis, we must focus on the success of V1C approaches. Healthcare purchasers are ready to support this transformation if we can provide the solutions that they seek. By following these five steps we can shift our focus to a system that is built around the patient, not the clinic, to better care for the patients our industry exists to serve.

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