Telehealth Virtual Care Platforms 2017
Who Is Supporting Healthcare Organizations’ Abilities to Expand Virtual Care?

1. American Well and Avizia Adopted Most Broadly across Visit Types

Early research shows that healthcare organizations use VCPs for three key visit types—scheduled/patient-focused visits, on-demand/consumer-focused visits, and telespecialty consultations. Most interviewed organizations want to deepen use within their current service lines and expand their telehealth offering into additional service lines and visit types. However, to date, American Well, Avizia, and VSee are the only vendors KLAS has validated as being used for all three key visit types.

Most telehealth vendors originally built their solution for one specific visit type, rather than as an all-encompassing platform, and few are capable of supporting the expansion organizations are looking for. InTouch Health, swyMed, and Avizia began with hardware to support the secure, reliable communication needed for provider-to-provider consultations; American Well and Carena offer provider network services to support on-demand/consumer-focused visits.

2. With Strategic Guidance, Providers Lead While Vendors Follow

For many organizations, telehealth is a new endeavor with an uncertain ROI. Those hoping for leadership and strategic guidance from their VCP vendor often find that guidance is limited to implementing existing product functionality. Vendors are generally supportive when called upon, but customers want a more proactive approach. This is especially problematic when vendors support complex telehealth programs, as is the case with American Well, Avizia, and VSee. Epic customers describe a one-size-fits-all approach that leaves strategy largely up to customers. Vendors with the highest ratings for guidance, such as InTouch Health, TruClinic, and Zipnosis, tend to offer less complex solutions for which provider expectations for guidance are typically tied to operational support.

3. Integration Touted by All; Few Organizations Actually Have It

Apart from Epic, vendors have not delivered on promises of integration. Provider organizations want to be able to access EMR data from within their VCP, but interfaces are missing, and many organizations are frustrated with what it costs to achieve any sort of integration. A large number feel that integration costs are too high and that most vendors are missing standard interfaces. Unidirectional EMR integration is possible for some, but organizations say it is generally insufficient to meet their workflow needs. A single respondent from American Well and two from Avizia have achieved bidirectional integration; however, these customers say this was achieved through extensive effort by their own organizations.

Writer
Alex McIntosh

Designer
Jess Wallace-Simpson