Future Health - 11/15/22
Delivering care in the new virtual world…
But, Amazon Pulls Back From Telehealth For the Time Being – In the November 10th issue of The Wall Street Journal, the CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy, announced the scaling back of several unprofitable businesses. And, the Amazon Care telehealth solution was one of the cuts!! According to the report, Amazon lost ($3B) in 2022 after posting $33B positive in 2021 and $21B positive in 2020. However, that does not mean Amazon is “out” of the health care business. In fact, Amazon continues to hold a $3.9B One Medical acquisition on the table. One Medical offers virtual as well as in-person primary care services. Keep an eye out on Amazon as I anticipate we have not seen the last of their efforts in the health care arena…
A Longer-Term Consideration – One of the side effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic has been the impact on the next generation. Specifically, the National Assessment of Educational Progress report – often referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card” was recently released and provides some ominous forewarnings on the education front. In virtually all of the states – and, I suspect worldwide as well – math and reading scores are down significantly. For 8th graders, only 26% of students showed proficiency which was down from 34% in 2019. The reading scores were equally ominous with only a third of students meeting proficiency standards in over half the states. There seems to be lots of finger pointing between Republicans and Democrats on the reasons for the decline. Rather than finger pointing; however, we should identify the core problem and create bipartisan, remedial solutions!!
Approaches To Alternative Care Delivery
Ideas and thoughts on how care delivery can be transformed…
The Ongoing Assessment of Telehealth and Telecare – Research on the effectiveness and efficiency of telehealth and telecare is clearly accelerating. In a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) the use of telehealth was found to be superior to in-person care for 11 of 16 quality performance measures related to primary care services. The American Academy of Family Physician’s Robert Graham Center in conjunction with Wellspan Health – a Pennsylvania-based health care system – collaborated in a study that included more than 500,000 patients who received primary care services across the Wellspan system over an 18 month period. The HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) measures were used as a point of reference for evaluating results in care delivery. In comparing the two approaches, in-person care was found to achieve better results in medication-based measures versus telehealth which scored higher in testing support services and counseling measures related to such care issues as vaccinations, chronic disease testing, cancer screening evaluations and depression screenings. Long story short – the data clearly showed the need for “integration” of the in-person and telehealth components of primary care delivery something I’ve been advocating for too long… The ongoing research will clearly help all of us as we move forward with telehealth and telecare initiatives in response to the ongoing march (however slight it may be seem to be) toward value-based care delivery models.
