tOP 4 Physician and Provider Barriers to Telehealth Adoption

1. Top 4 Physician and Provider Barriers to Telehealth Adoption

2. Telehealth in Pandemic • In the current pandemic, telehealth has demonstrated tremendous potential to fulfill the Triple Aim of Healthcare. • It helps improve patient experience, health outcomes, and reduces per capita cost in healthcare delivery, especially in rural and remote parts of the country. • Physician and provider reluctance to offer telehealth services emanates from a multitude of actual and perceived obstacles in the industry.  • The most common barriers cited for avoiding telehealth utilization include financial barriers, technical barriers, behavioral barriers and system barriers. • OnCallMD is a solution-driven telehealth platform that has overcome these issues to allow physicians/providers and patients to successfully, and easily, participate in telehealth visits.

3. Financial Barriers • The biggest barrier to telehealth adoption has been a lack of reimbursement for the service.  • Although U.S policymakers are allowing full reimbursement for telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic, payers, providers, and patients are still uncertain about spending their time and resources adopting telehealth due to past experiences in which it has not been reimbursed and the uncertainty regarding reimbursement once the pandemic ends. • Until all third-party payers permanently agree to pay for telehealth visits, reimbursement will remain a major barrier to utilization by physicians and providers. • In order to accelerate physician and provider adoption of telehealth, OnCallMD has eliminated this obstacle of payment uncertainty by developing a proprietary payment processing gateway that guarantees that the physician/provider will be paid by the patient’s insurance company or by the patient directly when a telehealth visit occurs. 

4. Technical Barriers • Providers in the U.S face very few direct technical challenges to adopt telehealth unless they live in a rural area with poor internet access and inadequate bandwidth because all that is necessary is a computer with a good processer and high-speed internet access. • Although adequate internet bandwidth is an infrequent problem in urban areas, physicians and patients do experience dropped video calls due to poor internet connectivity or browser incompatibility.  • OnCallMD has overcome this obstacle by developing a unique process that allows patients to reconnect a visit immediately if their visit was disconnected prematurely due to a technical problem thereby eliminating this point of frustration. 

5. Studies Depicting the Technical Barriers • A critical technical barrier in the telehealth environment is the current lack of access to a patient’s private physician/provider after-hours and on weekends. • Studies indicate that 60% of patients will not use telehealth if they don’t have access to their own physician/provider or one designated by their physician/provider. • This lack of after-hours accessibility results in expensive care for the patient from an unfamiliar provider and also loss of revenue for physician/provider. • OnCallMD has overcome this obstacle and allows the physician/provider to extend office hours to 24/7 virtual accessibility to himself or herself or to a designed covering colleagues. • This saves $200 – $300 per month per physician/provider.

6. Behavioral Barriers • Behavioral barriers result from a lack of familiarity related to telehealth workflow and uncertainty about online security. • Utilizing a HIPAA-complaint, cyber-secure telehealth software platform can ensure patient data security and privacy resulting in a better adoption rate.  • Telehealth platform like OnCallMD that provides experienced customer support to help educate users about the platform and how to successfully integrate it into their practices along with providing marketing support to create awareness of the availability of the service.

7. System Barriers • System barriers result from regulatory issues pertaining to licensure and reimbursement. • There are currently no specific licensing or credentialing issues for physicians/providers to offer telehealth services in their state of licensure. • However, if the physicians/providers want to provide telehealth services to patients outside of their state of licensure, they need to obtain licenses in each additional state in which they would like to provide virtual care.  • When a physician/provider creates an OnCallMD telehealth account, the software system automatically validates that the physician/provider is licensed in the various jurisdictions in which he/she proclaims licensure. 

8. Thank You • Source : OnCallMD​  https://www.oncall.md/​ • OnCallMDis the digital telehealth platform which optimizes both the provider and patient experience through consultations provided via phone, video, email or HIPAA-compliant text. Doctors can now experience the benefits of telehealth through the  OnCallMDapp to deliver remote healthcare for patients. They can conduct 24/7 online video consultations on-the-go with our advanced telehealth solution, all in compliance with HIPAA standards completely for Free! •  Read more : https://www.oncall.md/blog/top-4-physician-and-provider-barriers-to-telehealth-adoption/