Prediction for 2025: Telehealth will increase panel size and allow for more delegation
Dr. Lyle Berkowitz, CEO of KeyCare, is trying to make it easy for healthcare systems. He is the first Epic-based virtual care company – Epic has the largest market share among EHR vendors, making telemedicine startup quite easy for a wide range of providers.
But KeyCare’s goal is also simplicity: simplicity in quickly and broadly expanding a healthcare system’s physician panel. And that’s where Berkowitz sees a lot of movement in 2025 – from companies like his that provide healthcare systems with a network of virtual healthcare providers working on a telehealth platform.
We interviewed Berkowitz and asked him for his take on it in the field of telemedicine in the coming year. He said the benefits that additional physicians working remotely can bring to healthcare systems will really come into their own this year and push the virtual care paradigm much further.
While it should be noted, the optimistic predictions likely hinge on whether Congress expands telehealth flexibility beyond March 2025. The Continuing Resolution of December 2024 with a year-long extension was scrapped, and the subsequent emergency law only got the extension until Marchkick the can across the road.
Q. What is one of the biggest changes you foresee for telemedicine this year?
A. Phase 1 of telehealth is dead. This year we will see the continued rise of Telehealth 2.0.
The first phase consisted of isolated telehealth, where virtual care services were not truly integrated into healthcare systems. In contrast, Phase 2 of telehealth consists of a revised care model that allows physicians to automate, virtualize, and delegate the numerous, less complex, routine tasks that do not require office visits.
In this world many of these activities will take place accomplished online by virtual caregivers and non-physician team members who are empowered to manage stable patients through evidence-based protocols and similar rules to help automate their care. By expanding access and delivering more consistent care, organizations will increase efficiency and improve the quality of care.
Compared to traditional practice workflows, in-office physicians themselves will see a smaller number of more complex patients, while their patient panels would expand as they will oversee a team caring for a larger number of more stable patients.
Instead of scrambling to add more physicians in a competitive market, healthcare systems will outsource routine care to a technology-enabled virtual care team and expand patient access in a scalable manner.
Q. You suggest that health systems will increase their physician panels via telemedicine this year. How will this happen?
A. Healthcare systems will increasingly collaborate with virtual teams to enhance their physicians’ ability to care for patients by effectively increasing panel size. The problem is not a shortage of doctors, but a shortage of efficient use. Implementing a virtual team connected to the physician is the way to achieve this – without asking physicians to do more.
These telehealth partners will focus on virtual care, which is more efficient than physicians combining both clinical and virtual care. Virtual care should not be about increasing physician productivity from 22 to 24 patients per day, which no physician wants.
Instead, it’s about creating virtual care teams that efficiently handle routine care through automation, allowing office-based physicians to focus on complex cases. This team-based approach will be critical to sustainable telehealth success.
Ultimately, healthcare systems want to ensure that their patients always come to their front door for any type of care, from routine issues to complex situations. By working with connected virtual care partners, they will begin to ensure that access to their healthcare system is as ubiquitous as any competition, and that their quality is better as a result of the care coordination that results.
Q. You say that healthcare systems will see greater success in patient engagement and retention this year thanks to telemedicine. How so?
A. Patient wait times continue to increase in virtually all medical specialties, putting patients at risk for worse outcomes and health care systems at risk of losing patient volume to competitors such as urgent care clinics. To overcome these challenges, healthcare systems will develop new strategies to expand capacity and ensure their patients have access to timely care.
Patient engagement and retention is critical for healthcare systems to prevent leakage and maintain revenue as patients age and require more medical services. When patients are unable to make a timely appointment with their regular doctor, they are likely to seek other sources of care.
By embracing virtual options for routine care, as well as urgent but minor issues like rashes and ear infections, healthcare systems can increase capacity, reduce wait times and provide relief to busy, overworked physicians.
However, to ensure the success of their virtual care initiatives, healthcare systems must make it a priority to proactively communicate all available virtual care options to patients.
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