Virtual care services are in-demand and preferred by many patients and for good reasons. This trend is likely to continue and expand, which makes it a must-have service for your practice.
Understanding Virtual Care
Virtual care is any non-face-to-face communication between a healthcare provider and patients. It is a broad term that is often used interchangeably with telehealth and telemedicine, which are two concepts previously discussed in Telemedicine and Telehealth: What You Need To Know.
Virtual care differs from telehealth, which includes all types of communication that providers can use for health education or training. It is also different from telemedicine, which is more specific and requires a provider conducting a remote clinical examination of a patient to get a diagnosis and make a treatment plan.
Virtual care happens between a physician or other healthcare professional and a patient, which could include meetings and consultations, check-ins, and status reports. This type of care leverages telecommunication technologies to deliver care at any time and place.
Virtual Care Benefits All
More consumers now prefer virtual care services because of the ease in getting them and the convenience they experience, especially for those with mobility issues or who have no access to primary care physicians or specialists. Patients are also enjoying the reduced costs of virtual consultations, which are far less than the cost of an in-person visit would charge.
In truth, virtual care can benefit all members of the healthcare continuum including doctors, nurses, and caregivers with more flexibility in their scheduling as well as greater access to their patients and their health data. Healthcare personnel and administrators are able to boost their operational efficiency and staff productivity with reduced operational expenses.
Providers who opted to use virtual care strategies during the recent public health emergency have seen great results, particularly on the positive reception from their patients. They were able to deliver a better quality of care by improving access and adding timeliness to it.
In short, virtual care services are a good fit for any practice because it helps expand patient access to care and meet growing demand.
Virtual Care Through CCM and RPM
For patients suffering from chronic illnesses, virtual care services have offered a lifeline when an in-person visit might not be possible, could pose a danger to their health, or even be inconvenient. They can receive care right in the comfort of their homes. This type of virtual care is called Chronic Care Management or CCM, which has been one of the best-kept secrets of the healthcare industry until Medicare came along in 2015.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has introduced CCM and established a benefit that permits physicians to be compensated for non-face-to-face services. For many years, primary care physicians have been carrying out CCM for patients with chronic medical conditions, including care coordination without the benefit of being paid for their time. Now, virtual care services are incentivized, adding more reasons on why a practice should fully adopt this service that has transformed the delivery of healthcare at the primary practice level.
A great companion to CCM is Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), which CMS also incentivized in 2018. Together CCM and RPM make one effective virtual care program, and they are billable in a single calendar month.
CCM provides multiple touchpoints in-between office visits to ensure compliance with care instructions including medication adherence. RPM captures patient data in real-time to reflect health status and provide clinicians with adequate information to make timely interventions.
CCM and RPM lead to improved patient and financial outcomes. Yet, there are still physicians who have not tapped into this new revenue source. They have not embraced virtual care as an innovation to optimize patient care.
Here’s why:
Physicians are unaware of Medicare’s CCM and RPM incentives.
Some physicians are unfamiliar with it or if they are, the intricacy of regulatory requirements stops them from even attempting to start their own CCM and RPM programs. Many physicians just do not have the time or resources to learn more about it, determine how it is done, and maintain the service over time.
Physicians are unable to adopt CCM and RPM because of inadequate resources and capabilities.
For small practices and even larger ones, starting a CCM and RPM program can be overwhelming. Starting a program represents a significant undertaking and investment that requires time, staff resources, and the appropriate technologies. Many have stopped after reaching out to a few dozen of their patients with many lamenting that there’s just too much work involved, not to mention the expense and increased overhead.
Some physicians follow a herd mentality.
Understandably so, some physicians are not risk-takers because their training is based on following strict protocols. Oftentimes, physicians will only take on a new program when they hear other practices are doing it. What they are missing though is that a practice that continues to grow would serve more patients and provide needed care to vulnerable or high-risk populations like the chronically ill and the elderly.
Without virtual care, chronic care cost and resource utilization will continue to exact a toll on the healthcare system. CMS knows this having spent an annual expense of $1 trillion in taking care of patients with diabetes, cardiovascular, neurological conditions, and other chronic illnesses. To further aggravate the situation, by the age of 75 many Americans have more than five chronic medical conditions. With 40 million Medicare patients eligible for CCM and RPM, it is a pity that there has been a small market penetration.
Virtual care services are a good fit for any practice in terms of patient outcomes and adding a new revenue stream in billable services, and CMS has been pushing for increases in reimbursement rates every year. Outsourcing is a viable solution with a growing number of CCM and RPM vendors in the market though not all vendors offer a comprehensive service.
Ascent Care Partners’ Virtual Care Solutions
To ensure patient and financial benefits to your practice, Ascent Care Partners (ACP) offers turnkey CCM and RPM solutions to help physicians realize a huge amount of deserved revenue without increasing overhead. Having a substantial number of years working in the industry, ACP has educated many physicians on the importance of virtual care services and how CCM and RPM work.
ACP has rescued many small practices that have started and failed their CCM and RPM programs. Practices that have partnered with ACP are assured that there will be no changes to the way they practice medicine, disruption to their usual work routines, or requirement of an upfront fee.
ACP leverages a strong operational plan and a well-thought-out marketing strategy to reach and enroll patients. ACP offers doctors their own “Premium Care Program” to optimize their remote patient care.
