Telehealth News Recap - June 2021
It can be tough to catch up and keep up with the latest news, trends, interviews, and insights in the virtual care space. That’s why we’re here to do the work for you with our monthly telehealth news recap.
This month we explore the demand for better treatment of healthcare providers on the frontlines, including support for mental healthcare access to minimize burnout, and positioning our clinicians as leaders. We also explore what the White House investment in public health means for tackling COVID-19 long term, and industry leaders vetting how virtual care is an adoption for healthcare that is here to stay well beyond the pandemic.
Trends & Insights
Healthcare is Infrastructure, and Here's Why We Should Invest
With a rapidly aging population and more elderly Americans with complex healthcare needs, there is explosive demand for long-term care. But our current system to manage that demand is full of potholes and foundational cracks. All of that needs to be buttressed by innovative technology tools that help make the home care system smarter and seamlessly coordinated with providers and caregivers.
Read the full article from Fierce Healthcare >
Report Calls for Broader Scope of Practice for Nurses, Better Support for Equity, Mental Health
According to a report recently published by the National Academy of Medicine and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, demand for nurses will only grow, and so will the demands of the job. For the profession to meet the needs of the population over the next decade, a substantial increase in the amount, type and distribution of nurses across geographic areas, specialties, and care settings is needed.
Read the full article from Healthcare Dive >
Tough & Engaging Conversations
America’s Nurse Shortage Is a Crisis in the Making. Training Nurses to Be Leaders Could Solve It.
America’s nursing workforce is in dire straits. Some experts estimate that last year marked the largest retirement of nurses ever recorded in the U.S., and forecasts predict an additional 500,000 nursing retirements by 2022, which will leave the country with a nursing shortage totaling an estimated 1.1 million. The question here should be obvious: What if health care systems invested in educating their existing nursing workforce to prepare them as leaders in the business of healthcare?
Read the full article from Fortune >
Op-Ed: How Doctor Culture Sinks U.S. Healthcare
As we return to normality, we need to acknowledge that the same culture that turns doctors into heroes is also contributing to a healthcare crisis of rising costs and decaying standards. Clinicians, they say, are bogged down by administrative burdens, pesky prior-authorization requirements, and cumbersome computers that (literally) sit between doctors and patients.
Read the full article from the Los Angeles Times >
Policy & Regulatory Updates
Biden Announces $7.4 Billion to Hire More Public Health Workers Amid Pandemic
The White House announced that it is investing $7.4 billion to hire more public health workers to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and future health crises. The Biden administration said $4.4 billion will go toward boosting states’ overstretched public health departments, allowing them to hire disease specialists to do contact tracing, case management, and support outbreak investigations and school nurses to help schools reopen.
Read the full article from The Washington Post >
Arizona’s New Telehealth Law Supports Audio-Only Platforms, License Portability
HB 2454, one of hundreds of bills introduced this year across the country to push connected health coverage and access past the coronavirus pandemic, essentially makes permanent emergency measures that were put in place in March 2020 to deal with COVID-19. The new law establishes payment parity for many telehealth services, especially telemental health treatments.
Read the full article from mHealth Intelligence >
Growth & Innovation
Telehealth 2050: The Future Design of Virtual Care Technology
Miles Romney, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at telehealth company eVisit, paints a vivid, sci-fi-seeming picture of what virtual care will look like in the year 2050, “That telehealth is happening at all, and that its upward inflection has been so pronounced over the last 14 months, is one of the biggest indications of changes to come. It signals a clear and present motivation on the part of health systems to embrace new ways of managing the very core of their services: the interaction of a patient with a healthcare provider.”
Read the full article from Healthcare IT News >
Click-and-Mortar Is a Better Model for Healthcare
The widespread adoption of virtual care, we believe, will lead to hybrid models that we call “click-and-mortar,” which combine the best elements of in-person and virtual care to deliver better outcomes more reliably and efficiently. The uptake of virtual care in 2020 is stunning: 97% of primary care doctors provided some kind of telehealth care in 2020. In cases like behavioral health, they can decrease the stigma associated with accessing care.