Why Interoperability is the Next Critical Consideration for Virtual Care

August 28, 2023 - The Covid-19 public health emergency (PHE) prompted an industry-wide shift in healthcare delivery. Most notably, virtual care technologies that were slowly gaining traction pre-pandemic skyrocketed, and now, most healthcare provider organizations offer some form of virtual care.

But, with the withdrawal of the PHE declaration in May, the urgent need for deploying telehealth-enabled care services has declined. Thus, healthcare providers are focused on the next step in the evolution of their virtual care strategy. This involves a growing focus on interoperability as virtual care becomes more complex.

"More and more today, a telehealth system needs to be much more than just video," said Anand Nathan, co-founder and chief product officer at AmplifyMD, an integrated virtual care solution. "It needs to be really coordinating workflows and managing data flows to be able to do a lot more and allow physicians to be free in terms of their ability to work in multiple health systems at the same time and deliver care."

Virtual care interoperability provides numerous clinician and patient benefits, including an enhanced telehealth experience. But, to reap these benefits, healthcare provider organizations must not only understand virtual care interoperability and hurdles to implementation but also keep interoperability top of mind when selecting a technology platform. 

WHAT IS INTEROPERABILITY IN THE VIRTUAL CARE ARENA?

Virtual care interoperability can mean different things to different people, but generally, it refers to telehealth technology that includes capabilities supporting all aspects of the virtual care continuum, said Nathan.

"When you think about a virtual care platform or a telehealth platform, it's really about how can you take those encounters and be able to manage the workflow and orchestrate all of the pieces that need to happen in the background, including that video connection, but more importantly, all of the things that go around it," Nathan said.

An older version of virtual care focused only on the audio and video technology that enables remote connections between clinicians and patients, but today, virtual care platforms must also be able to handle tasks such as scheduling, documentation, billing, and other care coordination processes.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Interoperable virtual care platforms can enhance care processes by boosting care efficiency and improving patient and clinician experience.

For instance, a lack of virtual care interoperability increases reliance on double documentation systems, leading to errors, incomplete information, and care delays, Nathan noted. This significantly hampers clinicians' ability to work efficiently, driving up stress levels.

"The problem that we're solving is making physicians and nurses more efficient, which allows them to see more patients, but more importantly, it also reduces burnout," he said.

Clinician efficiency is also crucial in the face of growing resource constraints across US health systems.  New platforms that increase operational inefficiencies can push clinicians out of healthcare, adding to the already significant workforce shortage burden in the country.

With an interoperable virtual care platform, clinicians can mitigate inefficiencies, which can both curb burnout and improve the quality of patient care.

"There's more time spent focused on the patient," Nathan said. "We just see better, higher quality of care. We're able to monitor quality and layer in many more controls because we have that interoperability."

CHALLENGES TO INTEROPERABILITY IN VIRTUAL CARE

One of the most significant barriers to virtual care interoperability is the slow adoption of new data standards, such as application programming interface (API)-based integrations, according to Nathan. Healthcare provider organizations often stick to older standards that drive inefficiency.

This slow adoption is prevalent in larger health systems, particularly those created through multiple mergers and acquisitions. Within these health systems, different parts of the organization may be at varying levels of IT competency and capability. 

"Oftentimes conglomerates are built up through a series of acquisitions, and you may not even have a consistent standard or a consistent integration for interoperability across an entire health system," Nathan said.

Not only can a lack of standards adoption hinder virtual care interoperability, but so can differing data models.

Nathan noted that translating data between systems with different data structures is a crucial aspect of virtual care interoperability. But data sharing and standardizing processes require resources and time that only some provider organizations have.   

SELECTING AN INTEROPERABLE VIRTUAL CARE PLATFORM

To overcome the above challenges and optimize the benefits of virtual care interoperability, healthcare provider organizations must select the appropriate platform.

According to Nathan, leaders should implement platforms that integrate easily with the organization's existing workflows and systems rather than closed platforms. Closed platforms that are separate from other critical systems, like EHRs, add to the administrative burden plaguing clinicians.

"Oftentimes, the best virtual care programs we see are the ones where you have the virtual care platform sitting in the background orchestrating everything within the existing tools," Nathan said. "When [clinicians] don't see any difference, when they're still doing the same thing that they would do for an in-person kind of encounter, that's where we see the highest engagement [in virtual care] and the most impact to the key clinical and financial metrics."

The healthcare industry has moved well past the stage where virtual care only pertains to connecting patients and providers using technology. To succeed in the fast-evolving world of digitally enabled care, provider organizations must focus on the interoperability of their virtual care platforms. Working toward broader virtual care interoperability offers possibilities for new scalable and cost-effective care delivery models.

"I think that's the promise of virtual care," Nathan said. "It's not just to replace the existing care models and maybe do it slightly more efficiently. It's the ability to leverage virtual care to create new and innovative models in the future that really make a big difference in terms of patient outcomes as well as impact the overall economics and cost of care."

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AmplifyMD is a leading virtual care technology company supporting hospitals, health systems, and medical facilities. With a revolutionary virtual care platform and a team of specialists in 15+ fields ready to help, AmplifyMD empowers healthcare organizations to deploy, manage, and scale virtual and hybrid healthcare with a single integrated solution.