by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | April 24, 2018
From the April 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
But billing and reimbursement began making headway with the VA system leading the way on the government side in order to create better access for patients.
The concerns some doctors have expressed about virtual care replacing them is unfounded van Terheyden said. “This is not a replacement, it’s supporting the existing infrastructure. For people who can’t or won’t take a trip in, we can give them alternatives. It’s like running a business – I can’t run a business just through conference calls, but it supplements the work.”
The stick or carrot, depending on your take, that will accelerate the use of virtual care comes down to budget consideration. With the shift from fee-for-service to outcome-based reimbursement, facilities will be keen to consider more options for reducing costs. One of the ways to reduce costs is to reduce overheard and overhead by definition, is tied to physical locales. Keeping patients out of the hospital will be key to reducing costs and handled correctly, the convenience of virtual care can increase patient satisfaction. It has the potential to encourage patients to be more proactive about their care as well.
Facilities will have to crunch the numbers to see how or if it makes sense to support greater use of virtual care. Currently, more investment would be needed to integrate it into the existing workflow. “I quote a radiologist friend of mine, ‘if it costs me one nanosecond more, I’m not going to do it,’ said van Terheyden. “It’s extreme, but it really kind of summarizes. If it’s inconvenient, not included, detail not captured, it represents a problem. That’s where all the virtual care companies and folks who are doing this really try to integrate.”
Perhaps the biggest sea change will have to occur among construction companies. For some of them long use to building new hospital wings or even whole facilities, scaling down to a landscape dotted with virtual care clinics could be a tough pill to swallow.
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