Hcs 531 - Health Care Organizations and Delivery Systems

eVisits the New Office Visit

Toni M Cunningham

HCS/531 Health Care Organizations and Delivery Systems

May 18, 2016

Professor: Dale Mueller

eVisits the New Office Visit

The task at hand is to market the new eVisit concept to Caduceus Medical Group, they are multi-service group that offers services for every age group. They also offer Caduceus Specialties and Ancillary Diagnostic Services. With four locations they are just the right size to start using this tool within their clinics. In this paper what will be shared are the benefits of using this new tool, and the many ways it will help not only their physicians with time management but will also free up some time for all their patients.

What is an eVisit? Answering this question before going any further is a great idea. An eVisit is like having a physician in the palm of your hand, Physician visits right at the tip of the patient’s finger. eVisits refer to any online consultation between a patient and a provider, these visits are usually non-urgent and are usually for acute health concerns, things like requesting a prescription be sent to the patient’s local pharmacy or physical rehabilitation center, ordering lab tests or maybe even requesting an in office visit as a follow up. As a suggestion if an office visit is requested offer a refund for the online visit so that the patient is not overcharged for the same information (Hickson, 2015).[pic 1]

Another hot issue that must be covered before moving forward is privacy. Whenever there is an application that involves the use of the Worldwide Web the first concern is privacy. One of the most serious acronyms in healthcare is HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), this is one of the most serious federal mandate known to man, well probably not that serious but it is serious. This rule requires security of all health information in electronic format. From the beginning of this concept everyone involved understood that privacy would be an issue, and that there was a need for patient authorizations. With that being the case a contract that can be edited with the organization’s header and/or logo can be added so that the patient agrees with all the terms of an eVisit. (See sample contract attached).[pic 2]

There have been firewalls created, cloud usage, encryption, password and username trials and Medical data blockers have been created and tested all in the name of protecting the visitors. These trials have been going on since 2010 with much success, large medical groups are now buying into this not just because they can see more patients a day, but because their patients can save their money to do something that they like to do instead of something they have to do (Pallardy, 2015).

        One visit to Caduceus Medical Group’s website shows that providers at this facility are very open to new ideas. The website has a patient portal where patients can ask doctors questions and they can expect a response within 24 hours, there is also a prescription tab where the patients can request refills when needed, there is even an appointment tab for making appointments online, so there is no need to ask if the providers understand what an eVisit is so all that is needed here is to share all the new things that have been added since the idea hit the board, the studies that have been made, the solutions to some of the earlier issues that have been fixed and revamped, and show how this tool will save not only their patients time and money, it may even allow the providers to cut some of their overhead (www.caduceusmedicalgroup.com).

        Recently there was a study done on different age groups, and also on males and females, because providers wanted to know who would really use this service. The two eVisit implementation studies reported that middle-aged patients used the service more often than their younger counterparts and women have used eVisit technologies more frequently than men. There have been a few contradictions when dealing with the elderly, they will use the service but they are little more reluctant when there is a fee attached to their usage (Hickson, 2015).        

        As more and more physicians are starting to use eVisits the number of visits a day are soaring for instance, Telemedicine provider Teladoc has reached what they are calling their new high, 3,000 e-visits in one day. Teledoc says that comes to approximately one patient call every ten seconds, and this is with the patient getting a doctors online within 7 to 10 minutes. They say that is equal to all ambulatory visits in a typical day at a large U.S. Medical center or you can say the same as five of the largest United State emergency rooms combined, Wow! They even posted a scrolling electronic message so the whole facility could read it “It’s a lot of visit”. Teledoc also compared their one day total to their numbers five years ago and found that they were seeing 3000 patients a month back then (Jayanth, 2016).