Virtual Visits by your Doctor

Are you ready to visit your doctor … by iPhone?

American Well is banking on it.

You may not recognize the name, but the company is a key player in telemedicine: American Well provides telehealth kiosks and software to most of the nation’s health plans, leading hospitals like Cleveland Clinic, and major employers like Oracle.

“Our wingspan is 120 million people,” says CEO Roy Schoenberg.

And on Monday, Schoenberg’s company is making a play to become one of the biggest names in all of health care. American Well will unveil its “Telehealth 2.0″ suite of products and services at the American Telemedicine Association’s trade show in Los Angeles.

American Well’s audacious goal: To shift patient care out of doctors’ offices, and toward smartphones and tablets. To have the nation’s physicians not just on demand for urgent crises, but available to manage follow-up care, too.

“We want to take telehealth that was used as a convenience measure for patients, and put it in the hands of physicians,” says Schoenberg.

Telehealth’s moment is arriving

When industry analysts talk about the “Uber for healthcare,” they tend to focus on services like Pager and Heal, which allow users to summon a doctor for house calls.


But those platforms have had limited success. There are only so many doctors available to drive from house to house, after all.And the reality is that most of the health care we need doesn’t need a live doctor.

Increasingly, American health care revolves around getting prescriptions refilled, or behaviors adjusted — and regular monitoring by virtual caregivers may do the trick.

Data suggests that video visits with doctors are just as effective as visits in person.

Nearly half of the consumers responding to the Advisory Board Company’s consumer choice survey said they would consider an email or webcam visit the next time they needed medical care for a cold, flu, or similar illness.


Of course, the technology to do virtual visits has been around for years. But just 1 million or so virtual visits were conducted in 2014, compared to about 1 billion real-life visits to doctors.


So why haven’t virtual visits caught on?

One major reason is that for many doctors, telehealth just didn’t pay. A 2014 survey found that 62% of respondents received lower reimbursement or no pay at all for telemedicine services.

But that’s changing.Medicare is beginning to reimburse providers for a limited number of telehealth services. The last Congress considered nearly 60 bills to expand telemedicine reimbursement and adoption, and more legislation is now on the table, RockHealth’s Sarah Jacobson and Teresa Wang note.

And UnitedHealthcare last Thursday made a major announcement: The nation’s largest private insurer says it will pay doctors just as much to do a video visit as an in-person one.

Looking forward

American Well’s announcement is the latest reminder: The telehealth industry is on the verge of a major moment.

Venture capitalists invested nearly $300 million in telemedicine last year, RockHealth notes. American Well alone raised $81 million in private investment.

And holdouts — from Medicare to medical directors — are coming around.

“Five years ago, this was missionary work to explain the value” of virtual visits to health insurers, Schoenberg says.

“Now there’s no question,” he adds. “When we sit in front of them, the ROI conversation doesn’t happen anymore.”