Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems now provide the majority of telehealth across the country. However, while health system doctors are returning to their office routines, patient demand in many cases has begun to outstrip the health system’s supply. .
Some health systems have contracted with third-party telemedicine providers that often require patients to use a separate system that is not well integrated with other medical system technologies. economic. Other health systems have built on the strength of their own virtual care providers but are not capable of providing comprehensive, 24/7 coverage.
For a perspective on the situation from a completely new player, IT news about healthcare interviewed Dr. Lyle Berkowitz, CEO of KeyCare and primary care physician. KeyCare is a virtual first care platform built using Epic EHR and other technologies. KeyCare launched its system two months ago, providing services to the Spectrum Health West Michigan Division of the BHSH System.
Berkowitz, a longtime clinical informatics and health IT leader, discusses how KeyCare works, its ties to EHR giant Epic, $24 million in recent A-chain funding, progress with BHSH System’s Spectrum Health West Michigan division, and what the future of his company and telehealth in general could look like.
Q: Please describe KeyCare, who uses it and what it allows through telehealth.
ONE. KeyCare is taking a fairly simple approach to helping health systems expand the virtual care services they can provide to their patients.
First, instead of building our own platform from scratch, we licensed EHR and telehealth technology from Epic Systems and optimized it to deliver virtual care enhancement for health systems. other economy. Second, now that our instance of Epic is up and running, we are contracting with virtual providers, also known as virtual homes, so that they can be available on our platform. I.
As a result, Epic-based health systems can now add virtual care coverage through their own front door, instead of requiring patients to sign up for someone else’s portal. Patients have a more seamless experience and enhanced quality because data is shared bidirectionally between the KeyCare Epic instance and the Epic instance of the health system.
We can also integrate with other EHRs through industry standard interoperability options like CareQuality.
On the virtuoso side, we are planning to partner with many telehealth groups looking for a powerful EHR technology platform that can be easily compatible with the majority of healthcare systems in the country. USA.
Using Epic’s extensive EHR functionality, we are able to support a wide variety of virtual care options, from primary care to behavioral health, to appropriate specialists, to patient follow-up from far away.
Q: Please discuss the close connection with EHR giant Epic.
ONE. We are part of the Epic community, which means we are Epic customers who license their electronic health record software similar to many other health systems around the world. However, we have a slightly different focus than most of their other clients.
First, we’re optimizing our version of Epic for virtual care services, which affects what features we enable, and the content we build. Second, we are optimizing our instance around the concept of a service to other Epic customers by making the most of Epic’s interactive features that enable cross-instance scheduling, shared data, messaging and ordering.
As a result we were able to enable support for other Epic systems in a very short amount of time with minimal IT resource requirements as it was a configuration rather than an integration between the two.
Ultimately, we realized we were doing something new in the Epic community, but Epic has been a great partner in helping us get the most out of their technology and collaborating in helping develop future technological innovations.
Q: You recently closed $24 million in Series A funding backed by 8VC, LRVHealth, Bold Capital, and Spectrum Health Ventures. How are you going to use the money? How will they apply to virtual care?
ONE. These funds will be used to further optimize our version of Epic, as well as build our team to better serve our medical and virtual system partners.
Q: You launched in July by providing services to the Spectrum Health West Michigan Division of BHSH Systems. How is that coming to an end? What types of telehealth services have you provided?
ONE. It went very well. We demonstrated Epic’s “Telehealth Anywhere” technology that allows patients to enter Spectrum’s digital front door – their MyChart portal – and then book on-demand virtual urgent care appointments with providers works on Epic’s version of KeyCare.
As a result, Spectrum can now offer their patients 24/7, 50-state virtual emergency care coverage. This allows them to fulfill their promise to always be there for their patients, as well as to extend their contracts to payers and employers that require that kind of coverage.
And within the first two months, we were helping Spectrum take care of patients who traveled across half of the United States.
Q: What will the future of your company and remote company look like?
ONE. We started with virtual urgent care coverage 24/7, 50 states because that is an ongoing request from health systems. Now that we’re up and running, we look forward to partnering with more and more health systems across the US, as well as expanding functionality.
Next, we will add additional specialties. We should meet with behavioral health therapists to strengthen our health system partners before the end of the year. And we’re exploring other specialties from extended primary care support, maternal care, cardiac rehabilitation, dietitians, speech therapists, to chronic care management.
And then, over time, we plan to increase the efficiency of our magicians by adding asynchronous support, automating as many processes as possible, and using other technologies to make care as easy and convenient as possible for both the provider and the patient.
Our vision is that we will enable multi-team health systems to extend rich and intensive virtual care, with a particular focus on making routine care easy, effortless. as accessible and affordable as possible for their patients.
We believe this will allow health system doctors to manage a much larger panel size while at the same time reducing the number of in-office visits they need to see. The outcome of this type of virtual care will therefore be increased accessibility and quality for patients, reduced burden on doctors, and increased revenue for the health system.
Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.
