Technology is increasingly being used to expand access to physician services. While teleradiology has become standard practice, use of technology is quickly advancing into primary, critical (ICU), psychiatry and many other care specialty areas. “Virtual” medicine is not only being used in rural locations, but anywhere that patients and/or families don’t have access to the medical care they need.
The one constraint on telemedicine expansion has been provider reimbursement. According to a March 10th article in Hospitals & Health Networks, however, that is quickly changing. Today, 47 states now offer some type of telehealth coverage via their Medicaid programs. Given the cost efficiencies and growing tendencies toward bundled payment systems, telemedicine will likely continue to play a more critical role in accepted medical care.
It’s easy to see, as we do our physician recruitment and practice mystery shopping work, how telemedicine will benefit “hard-to-recruit” specialties and geographies. It’s also clear how it will improve the access challenges facing many employed practices, particularly in primary care. But what will telemedicine do for practice culture and provider engagement?
As a “virtual “consulting practice, Barlow/McCarthy experiences firsthand the cost and capacity benefits of working off-site. At the same time, meeting with our clients in-person allows us to truly understand the breadth and depth of their individual situations. In-person, we not only hear what they are expressing, but we can also feel their challenges in a much more powerful way. Similarly, because our consultants are working in different locations, we have to deliberately arrange “together-time” to really engage with one another and nurture our collaborative culture.
As your organizations look to telemedicine to solve future challenges, remember that technology and systems can only go so far in connecting physicians and patients within an organization. It can work virtually, but it takes real thinking, time and attention to build that spirit of collaboration. If we are struggling with physician engagement already, imagine the deliberate effort it will take to keep a pulse on the medical community when even more physicians are providing care remotely. Yes, it’s important to plan for the technological advancements of a telemedicine approach, but we also need to consider how we will nurture our relationships as well.