COVID-19 Impact Report-Telehealth has Promising Outlook for Increasing Patient Satisfaction and Provider Access
ROBERT L. STONE, MD
Like many physician practices, Central Ohio Primary Care (COPC) moved quickly to create telehealth services for patients early in the COVID-19 pandemic. COPC physicians and providers embraced the technology, as did our patients. We solicited patient feedback and were pleased that 98% of our patients responded that they were satisfied or highly satisfied with the experience. At one point, telehealth services provided over 70% of our patient care, allowing patients to avoid potential exposure to COVID-19 while also tending to their medical needs. To serve patients without the technical ability or devices to complete a telehealth visit, we added the infrastructure to allow telehealth visits from our parking lots - and provided drive-up patients with an iPad already logged into the visit. We also developed services to make telehealth available after hours as well in mid-2020 and now have availability to complete such visits through 11:00 p.m. seven days a week.
The future for telehealth services at COPC is promising. Although remote visits now only account for 12-14% of our total daily visits, we recognize the value of these services for busy patients or those with a variety of issues that can be easily addressed by means other than a physical visit to an office. Accessibility off-hours as noted above is also highly valued by patients. Of course, along with happy patients the use of these resources also lowers the total cost of care which benefits our group financially as we move from fee-for-service medicine into value-based medicine. Thus, our continuation of telehealth services will improve both the health of our patients (they are the “big winners”) but also the health of our company.
We know we are not alone in our assessment and utilization of this important advancement; the Healthcare Collaborative of Greater Columbus (HCGC), an affiliate organization of the CMA and one I'm pleased to lead as a Board Director, has captured telehealth use data as a part of its Quality Transparency (QT) Reporting Project. The QT report captures data of nine National Quality Forum (NQF) endorsed clinical quality measures from 13 healthcare organizations (including COPC) representing over 223 primary care, federally qualified health centers, and behavioral health practice sites that are caring for nearly 1 million patients across Central Ohio. Since 2014, the report has been released twice a year, providing benchmarking, trends, and important insights to help as practices strive for continuous improvement. HCGC has increased the number of participating practices from just over 80 reporting in 2014, to 223 in the most recent iteration of the report. On average, reporting practices performed over 1,000 telehealth appointments with patients each, from March-July 2020-223,000 telehealth visits in all. The rapid and widespread implementation of telehealth shown in the report demonstrates that providers in the region prioritize the safety and healthcare of their patients, yet telehealth services should remain an important part of all Central Ohio providers' strategies to improve the health and well-being of our patients.