Last month, we reviewed the trend of consumer-facing health companies expanding their healthcare presence. This month we are reviewing, how hospitals and legacy health care organizations are re-designing and implementing innovative care models.
Here are several new studies and a new service which highlight this trend.
- New Primary Care, Retail and Tech Entrants Motivating Hospitals to Grow Consumer Chops In 2021, nearly one-half of hospitals and health systems ranked in Tier 2, in Kaufman Hall’s words, “a thoughtful approach to becoming more consumer-centric,” investing in digital infrastructure and programs across the enterprise. Another 4 in 10 providers were in Tier 3, beginning to target specific consumer health strategic, but not across the enterprise in a sustained way. The remaining 14% of providers fall into the outer tiers, 1 and 4, firmly focused on consumers at the center, or not working much on health consumers in their strategies
- CareFirst launches virtual-first healthcare platform. Blue Cross Blue Shield insurer CareFirst has launched a new virtual care practice for its nearly three million commercial members across Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia. The new virtual-first offering is called CloseKnit and provides a variety of services, including preventative, primary and urgent care, behavioral and mental healthcare, care coordination, and insurance navigation
- New data show a trend of telehealth adoption by patients and physicians. The report found that 70.3% of physicians worked in practices that used videoconferencing to provide patient visits in September 2020, compared to 14.3% of physicians in September 2018. Sixty-seven percent of physicians worked in practices that used telephone visits (the comparable figure for 2018 was unavailable). Overall, 79% of physicians worked in a practice that used telehealth, compared to 25% in 2018