Trends in Telehealth Care for Diabetes During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Telehealth and Medicine Today

A very large claims data analysis documents widespread adoption of telehealth use by patients with diabetes during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, giving us insight into the potential role of telehealth as we enter a stage of “new normal” of healthcare delivery in the U.S.

The COVID-19 Telehealth Impact Study was designed to describe the natural experiment of telehealth adoption during the pandemic.  This focused analysis can assist program development for care of large populations of patients with diabetes. 

We compared rates of telehealth use in the one-year pre and one-year post-onset of the COVID-19 pandemic among a population of 8,339,633 patients with diabetes.

Compared to a baseline of very low telehealth use in 2019, there was the rapid adoption of telehealth by patients with diabetes in Spring 2020.  27% of diabetics used telehealth in Q2 2020 and use rates declined in the ensuing months to approximately 13%.  Diabetics and their providers used telehealth to address a wide variety of health problems.  77% of telehealth visits addressed diabetes, 53% hypertension, and over 40% of visits addressed mental and behavioral health diagnoses.  Audio-only (telephone visits) accounted for a substantial portion of telehealth encounters (10.0- 16.3%) and will be an important consideration for future telehealth planning.  Over the course of the first 12 months of the pandemic, 98% of diabetics who used telehealth used 4 or fewer telehealth visits.

We believe that telehealth will quickly become a best practice for routine care of patients with diabetes and other chronic conditions.  Telehealth interactions 2-4 times per year supplemented with remote monitoring for glucose, blood pressure and weight have the potential to greatly enhance patient care. Further research will be needed to measure the telehealth impact on glycemic control, patient satisfaction and other outcomes.  We encourage CMS and other payers to embrace and promote use of telehealth based on this real-world experience of patients and providers during the pandemic.

Contributors:

Francis Campion

MITRE Corporation

Lucie Duffy

McLean Hospital

Aaron Burgman

MITRE

 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1763-9703

Ricardo Rojas

Mayo Clinic

Lindsey Sangaralingham

Mayo Clinic

Peter Sylvester

Trends in Telehealth Care for Diabetes During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Telehealth, and Medicine Today

IBM WATSON HEALTH - The rise and fall

Author.   Ron Miller

IBM Watson Health Begins To Take Shape

Mike Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM's Watson Business Group, announced Watson Health at the HIMSS conference Monday.

During 2015 at the HIMSS conference IBM announced a new business unit, Watson Health, that will offer cloud-based access to its Watson supercomputer for analyzing healthcare data.  The Watson Health Cloud will be an open source but secure platform on which care providers and researchers can share and analyze health data for greater insights into trends to improve individual and overall patient outcomes. IBM, which made the announcement at the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Chicago, also said it has acquired big data healthcare analytics providers Phytel and Explorys, whose software will be used in concert with Watson Health.

The Explorys platform enables healthcare systems to collect, link and combine data from hundreds of disparate sources across their enterprise and clinically integrated networks. This data will be derived from clinical, claims, billing, accounting, devices, community and patient information.

Phytel develops and sells cloud-based services that help healthcare providers coordinate care in order to meet new healthcare quality requirements and reimbursement models.

"Their data sets represent 90 million lives, primarily in this country," said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM's Watson Business Group.

Additionally, IBM announced three new partnerships with Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic to optimize consumer and medical devices. 

IBM reportedly shopping Watson Health just as healthcare gets hot

IBM could be looking to sell the Watson Health division for a mere $1 billion, according to an Axios report. The question is why is IBM running away from the healthcare vertical just as it seems to be heating up, and for such a low price?

Just last month, Oracle spent $28 billion to buy digital health records company Cerner. Last spring, Microsoft spent close to $20 billion to buy Nuance, which is used heavily in the medical industry, boasting 10,000 healthcare customers. That’s huge money, suggesting that enterprise companies are looking to embrace the healthcare vertical and willing to spend big bucks to do it.

IBM launched Watson Health in April 2015 to much fanfare. It was supposed to take Watson, IBM’s artificial intelligence platform, and put it to work on healthcare problems. The argument went something like this. Even the best doctor can’t read all of the literature out there, but a computer can do it quickly, and could come up with suggested courses of action to augment the doctor’s expertise and produce better outcomes.

Francisco Partners scoops up bulk of IBM’s Watson Health unit

IBM is making this sale just as the healthcare vertical is heating up. Last year, Oracle bought health records company Cerner for $28 billion and Microsoft bought Nuance Communications in a deal valued at nearly $20 billion. While both deals are pending regulatory approval, it shows how much large companies value the health vertical. It went on to spend $1 billion on Merge Healthcare and wrapped up its spending, buying Truven Health Analytics the following year for $2.6 billion. Although the company had high hopes that Watson Health would help drive its artificial intelligence push, the unit failed to produce the results it was hoping for and when Arvind Krishna replaced Ginni Rometty as CEO in 2019, he had different priorities.

Despite much hype and hope AI is just not yet living up to it's potential. Most big players have invested large sums of money and after more than five years, willing to absorb losses and cut bait, moving on to bigger fish. In health care much consolidation has eliminated the small fry and even middle sized fish to go after fewer entities, not related to health care. Electronic health records, telehealth ventures and remote monitoring companies are next in the feeding frenzy.

As in the past large corporations who have little or no experience in health care, nor have any interest in the ethics of healthcare are seizing control and playing 'business as usual'

ibm watson health - TechCrunch Search Results

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Manually chasing claims costs providers 19 minutes, $9.37 on average

When a provider manually runs a claim status check, it takes, on average, 19 minutes and costs providers $9.37.

In 2020, providers made 238 million claim status inquiries by phone, fax or email. Most payers still limit the number of inquiries allowed per call, which means more calls, more work for staff and more time wasted. And that’s before adding in the time it takes to update claim statuses in practice management or hospital information systems.

New financial performance demands are forcing revenue cycle, financial services and billing professionals to reevaluate their approach to claim monitoring. To unlock the cost savings and smarter workflows they need, it’s critical to deploy tech and tools that can easily automates the process. And not just any tech—you’ll need solutions efficient and flexible enough to meet the unique needs of your organization.

This whitepaper breaks down the most effective strategy for achieving smarter claim monitoring and shows you how to navigate the challenges you’ll face along the way.

The most efficient way to run a claims check is to submit it properly initially.  Not only does an improper claim cost revenue, it also adds expense to obtaining proper reimbursement. Proactive management of your billing staff for each payer obviates the chain of events resulting from deficient claims.

Becker's Health Care offers a white paper which outlines the process to insure your staff operates at maximum efficiency. Modern software and A.I. offers automated processes which saves staff time.

Download the White Paper

Comments or questions can be posted in the comment section

Manually chasing claims costs providers 19 minutes, $9.37 on average