Telehealth – The COVID Effect
Guy Pascoe looks into whether the rapid advances in telehealth brought on by COVID are here to stay.
“Telehealth use began to skyrocket back in March as patients saw virtual care as a necessity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients are continuing to see doctors over video visits but for different reasons now: It's more convenient and faster than going to see the doctor in person.”
Fierce Healthcare – June 2020
There’s a saying here that ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’, but recently it’s been his office as well - an office many of us share with small, noisy co-workers with two legs or four.
At first, we peered at each other through our screens as if blinking in the light of a new dawn. Most of us had probably used Skype or FaceTime, and we’d probably at least heard of Zoom, but we weren’t expecting these technologies to become so central to our working lives so quickly.
Most group meetings still involve someone waggling an ear and mouthing ‘you’re still on mute’ to a colleague, but pretty rapidly even proudly self-proclaimed Luddites have become quite adept at using web platforms for both work and social purposes. My 9-year-old daughter has been teaching her grandparents to play online cards.
But as lockdown starts to ease in many parts of the world, we’re all looking ahead to the ‘new normal’ – how much of this change will stick, and how far will we revert back to our old working ways?
Things are no different for many healthcare professionals. Virtual consultations started off as a necessity, but now patients have had a taste of them, to what extent will these new habits continue beyond the pandemic?
The doctor will see you (on screen) now
Experts estimate that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought telemedicine development forwards by 2-5 years - a monumental shift which has occurred in the space of just a few months. Rather than just a short-term fix to alleviate pandemic problems, it’s proving itself to be a viable solution for dealing with capacity issues, patient wait times and access.
It's also cost-effective and offers countless opportunities and benefits for clinicians, payers, healthcare providers and patients.
Research done by giant healthcare provider UnitedHealth Group showed that while 8% of US consumers used telehealth in December, this climbed to 29% by May, with further growth of >20% expected. But while this growth spurt was, of course, necessitated by COVID, the number of consumers citing convenience and speed (alongside safety) as a factor has also dramatically increased.
And it’s not just the younger, metropolitan demographic that’s changing: telehealth is making inroads with rural patients and seniors. Mental health is following a similar pattern: before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 2% of all behavioural health claims received by UnitedHealth’s Optum group were for a telehealth visit – by the end of March alone this had increased to 33%.
Pushing at an open door?
The implications of this shift are far-reaching but only time will tell how significant and how permanent they will be. Many patients will continue to value the human element of an office visit more than convenience. Some types of consultation just have to be done in person, and all physicians will attest to the merits of a face-to-face encounter when it comes to initial diagnosis in particular.
But many of these changes feel like accelerations of trends that were already in motion. For example, Telehealth consultations tend to be shorter and more focused than office visits, freeing up time that will help reduce waiting lists.
Meanwhile interest has been surging in the technology that surrounds virtual visits, such as remote monitoring devices, wearables and home health tech. Some of this tech has been around for years, but they feel like Cinderella innovations whose time has come to step into the mainstream. Then there are the major telemedicine apps such as Amwell and Doctor on Demand, whose download numbers have been soaring.
Another area that will be affected is the way healthcare companies market products to physicians. A survey among over 100 pharma and bioscience companies conducted by the Pharma Marketer in 2019 indicated that, by 2022, one-third of pharma companies would spend over 50% of their marketing budget on digital channels. COVID-19 will no doubt have added momentum to this trend.
Sermo’s recent COVID-19 HCP Sentiment Survey found HCPs expect to have fewer representative meetings during the crisis and believe there will be a shift to virtual and distance meetings in the future, particularly in the US and Europe.
In this case, necessity may not have been the mother of invention, but it has certainly moved things along.
Watch this space
We at Purdie Pascoe will be monitoring these changes closely. Many of our clients have remote monitoring tech whose day has come; many of the doctors we talk to, resistant to change for so long, now acknowledge the benefits that telehealth can bring to all stakeholders.
