Covid-19 has pushed the use of telemedicine exponentially as patients — and sometimes healthcare practitioners themselves — seek to avoid visiting healthcare facilities in person. And it appears this trend will continue post-Covid, providing a growing niche for healthcare staffing providers.
The telehealth market in the US is estimated to grow sevenfold by 2025, resulting in a five-year compound annual growth rate of 38.2%, according to research from Frost & Sullivan. In 2020 alone, the telehealth market is likely to experience year-over-year growth of 64.3%.
“Telemedicine has been on the brink for a while now,” Dr. Manish Naik, chief medical information technology officer at the Austin Regional Clinic in Texas, told Kaiser Health News. “And doctors and patients are going to find that when this is all over and the dust settles there are a lot of people who are going to want the telemedicine option to stay.”
AMN Well-Positioned for Wave
AMN Healthcare Services Inc. (NYSE: AHS), the largest US healthcare staffing provider, has been providing clinicians to healthcare organizations for telehealth over the last two decades as telehealth capabilities have evolved as a care delivery model, according to Maureen Huber, president, workforce technical solutions. Its telehealth solutions reach across almost all its service offerings; nurse, allied and physician staffing services all include telehealth – as required in clinical assignments. For the same reason, telehealth may be included in AMN’s managed services programs and other services.
“Since the pandemic began, we have seen a 300% increase in clinical candidates requesting assignments that included telehealth,” Huber told SIA. “We have seen a 400% increase in demand for our language services with telehealth integration.”
AMN also developed AMN Cares, an online and mobile app telehealth solution that provides healthcare organizations and their patients a secure, virtual way to assess, triage and monitor Covid-19 care and recovery.
“We are helping healthcare organizations understand the value and importance of telehealth solutions, which can help optimize and extend the reach of the healthcare workforce while also addressing health equity in underserved communities,” Huber said.
In the last two years, AMN has added two service line capabilities that are based in telehealth: Stratus Video provides language interpretation services for the healthcare industry that integrates telehealth to support care for limited English proficiency and deaf and hard-of-hearing communities; Televate is a teletherapy platform that leverages school therapists, psychiatrists, social workers and interpreters nationwide to provide needed services to school children.
Challenges
The main challenges to telehealth are regulatory.
“State-by-state licensing of healthcare professionals creates barriers to practice, because clinicians may be restricted from providing telehealth services across state lines,” Huber explains.
Reimbursement policies can also differ from in-person visits, even though the diagnosis and treatment are the same. While there has been some relaxation of regulations on telehealth during the pandemic, the future is uncertain.
“We need to continue to bring down barriers to telehealth service,” Huber says. “Telehealth should be reimbursed the same as in-person visits, and we need unrestricted telehealth services across state lines.”
Shift in Payment Benefits
On the bright side, since the start of the pandemic, almost every state took action to facilitate expansion of telehealth, according to the American Medical Association.
These included expanding Medicaid and state-regulated health-plan requirements to provide coverage parity with in-person service and eliminating any geographic or originating site limitations, and temporarily allowing audio only as well as audio visual services, according to Kimberly Horvath, senior legislative attorney, AMA Advocacy Resource Center.
States also have established payment parity with in-person services; before the outbreak, insurers paid less than half that amount, which dissuaded many doctors from offering the services. In some cases, states have also temporarily suspended deductibles, copayments and other cost sharing for telehealth.
Bright Future
Expect demand for telehealth to increase going forward.
“The pandemic has shown how important telehealth can be during a communicable disease crisis,” Huber says. “With shortages of all types of healthcare professionals expected to continue for the foreseeable future, telehealth is necessary to optimize the existing workforce. Telehealth is also vital to address health equity for many underserved communities.”
