Next Steps for Telehealth

In the March issue of Wired: “Telehealth has to be integrated fully into a total care system,” says Mario Gutierrez, executive director of the Center for Connected Health Policy. “It can’t just be a one-off. That’s not health care.”

Yes, telehealth is transformative and provides many benefits. It lets patient save time and travel to see a doctor. It allows doctors and nurses triage and even deliver some basic care more efficiently. However, the telehealth 1.0 is largely designed for episodic, fee-for-service visits, rather than providing total care. That presents a problem since healthcare should be seamless. This requires proper coordination, which is a challenge in today’s value-based, quality driven care models including telemedicine.

To solve this problem, we need to integrate the care team and the systems they use — and then we need to seamlessly connect the patient to all of that.

So imagine you have diabetes and your primary care physician is getting your blood glucose level each morning. Imagine that blood glucose is high for a couple of days and your PCP gets an alert, then her nurse contacts you to discuss what might be going wrong. Imagine your endocrinologist, dietitian and nephrologist are privy to this data too — and they can get alerts on care plans your PCP put in place if you’re going through a rough patch. Your PCP can coordinate directly with your endocrinologist and dietitian to take action to prevent any potential problem leading to an emergency visit or hospitalization.

This isn’t just “medical care” for one event that telemedicine or traditional office visit is currently limited to. It’s your “health care” — comprehensive and continuous care with your entire care team coordinating around you. It effortlessly manages your health and engages you in preventive, complete care.

And that’s Medssenger — connecting everyone involved for seamless care anywhere and everywhere.