The COVID-19 pandemic forced most U.S. healthcare systems to quickly pivot to virtual care. However, since peaking in late April, care has largely shifted back to in-person. Health systems are now challenged to further develop and integrate useful, usable, and sustainable virtual care tools into their broader care model in ways that benefit their organizations and the communities they serve.

At the start of 2020, very few U.S. healthcare systems had embraced virtual care at scale. Incentives to use these tools were generally not strong enough to overcome considerable barriers to change. By March, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, most systems quickly pivoted to virtual care to preserve care access, protect their patients, sustain their workforces, and maintain revenue. Within weeks, most systems were providing more virtual care-including video and phone visits, eVisits, eConsults, and messaging with clinicians and chatbots-in a single day than they had the entire prior year.

However, since peaking in late April, care has largely shifted back from virtual to in-person sometimes because in-person care is more clinically appropriate, but often simply because it is more familiar, more accessible, and easier to provide. Healthcare systems are now at a crossroads. Some will continue to build on their virtual care platforms to benefit their patients and advance their organizational goals. Others will backslide to business as usual, sacrificing their recently hard-earned gains and jeopardizing their long-term positions.  Continue Reading...

Even with information blocking regulations looming, health systems and EHR vendors are still conducting information blocking practices, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).

The ONC final interoperability rule defines information blocking as the intentional withholding of patient health information either from provider to provider or provider to patient. This has long been a touchy subject, with some industry experts questioning what exactly qualifies as "intentional."

With health systems and EHR vendors attempting to achieve interoperability and effective patient data exchange, both actors have encountered numerous challenges on the road to connectivity.   Continue Reading...