15 Key Performance Indicators to Power Success in Telehealth

In April of 2020, and over the course of the following 12 months, 97% of all primary care physicians  1 were forced to leverage telehealth.  Industry leaders were no longer asking when providers would finally embrace virtual care, but rather how successfully they would continue to scale its use.

As health systems prepare to scale existing programs and deliver a connected care experience, they’ll need to evaluate existing gaps in data collection and integration. While there isn’t a universal prescription for measuring and achieving success in telehealth, it’s important to start by identifying individual measures of success for each of three organizational domains in health systems: Clinical, Operational/IT, and Administrative/Executive.

In the recent White Paper: 15 Key Performance Indicators to Power Success in Telehealth, clinical and technical experts explore a full set of challenges and a solution framework for scaling telehealth by leveraging data across multiple environments and service lines, download the full paper to learn more.  Across the board, experts express the need to focus on key areas below:

Clinical Perspective

Clinical teams should ask:  Is the patient experiencing the same brand of care via telehealth as in the brick-and-mortar environment?  Enterprise systems must seamlessly integrate the patient experience across both settings. It is important to validate when each mode of care is appropriate via measured outcomes, and whether there are any service and/or health IT gaps.  Real-time reports and configurable clinical dashboards enable providers to better address and treat patients while preserving the same high level of clinical awareness both virtually and during in-person encounters, creating consistency for the health system brand. In doing so, telehealth can become a valuable asset that drives up overall quality of care and patient satisfaction.

Operational/IT Perspective

Operational/IT teams should ask: with an increase in the number of locations from which telehealth can be conducted, how can we reduce time and cost of data collection, while increasing accuracy?  One place to start is to reduce the number of data collection platforms. Choosing ones with custom workflows that facilitate reporting at each step of the process, further ensures the quality of data captured.  Operational teams should focus first on service lines that are more easily delivered through telehealth, then begin to expand beyond those as you maintain and improve quality of care.  A close examination of timeliness, cost, and quality of data collection can dramatically improve operational efficiency, adoption, and scalability.

Administrative/Executive Perspective

Administrative/Executive teams should ask: what are the best ways to integrate data systems across telehealth and in-person environments, so we can track factors that cause or prevent unplanned hospital stays? In fiscal year 2021, CMS will penalize 2,545 hospitals for having too many Medicare patients readmitted within 30 days.4 Tracking factors for readmission rates were already complicated enough, and now data must be integrated across multiple environments – including the lowest cost settings for patients – their homes.  Shifting to continuous tracking and measuring, rather than simple end-of-quarter analysis, is critical. A learning health system can make continual adjustments, informed by a real-time view of the impact of these adjustments over time.  Using encounter dashboards to assess completion rates and encounter volume is a good place to start.

Conclusion

COVID19 served as a catalyst for telehealth adoption across the healthcare industry.  Those who have embraced telehealth quickly and efficiently – and those who have astutely identified and integrated their goals across both telehealth and in-person environments – stand to gain increased opportunity and benefits from the market shift. To find out more about how ViTel Net’s vCareCommand Platform supports real-time business intelligence, click here.

Citations

1 Telemedicine Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Type (Products and Services), By Modality (Store-and-forward (Asynchronous), Real-time (Synchronous), and Others), By Application (Teleradiology, Telepathology, Teledermatology, Telecardiology, Telepsychiatry, and Others), By End User (Healthcare Facilities and Homecare), and Regional Forecast, 2020-2027

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/telemedicine-market-101067

4 Medicare Fines Half of Hospitals for Readmitting Too Many Patients, Kaiser Health News

https://khn.org/news/medicare-fines-half-of-hospitals-for-readmitting-too-many-patients/