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 Today in Health it this story is Optum now offering virtual care nationwide in all 50 states. Sound familiar? My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current. And Engaged Health Lyrics is my company.

I develop a quarterly state of health IT report that I can deliver to your team. These insights can help your leadership, sales, and even development team stay ahead of the emerging trends. I. In Health it. For more information, check out health lyrics.com. All right, let's take a look at today's story.

Today's story comes from Healthcare IT News. Optum now offering virtual care nationwide execs say, and this is excerpts from the story. United Health subsidiary Optum has launched a new virtual care product. Optum Health, CEO says the software, Optum Virtual Care is now live in all 50 states. According to the transcript of the April 15th earnings call, executives from both UnitedHealth and Optum said the software aims to integrate physical care, telehealth, home care, and behavioral care.

That's a pretty good suite. We were very proud of how quickly we stood up over 17,000 providers during the pandemic on telehealth solutions. But that really is just the beginning, said Optum Health, CEO, Wyatt Decker on the call. What will really differentiate our product to those that we serve is the ability to offer virtual solutions, he said, but then if necessary, immediately connect them to live brick and mortar solutions for more complex or thorough care, as well as identifying and triaging both physical and behavioral healthcare needs and offering comprehensive behavioral care continued.

Decker. Then as is usually the case with healthcare IT news stories, they go into why it matters and the larger trends. So why it matters. On the call Thursday, executive signaled their optimism about virtual care's sustainability despite declines in use. From the peak of Covid 19 pandemic, we've obviously seen telehealth develop as a set of capabilities over the last several years, said Andrew Witty UnitedHealth Group, CEO.

We also think that the ways in which they're being utilized are evolving rather than a replacement. For in-person care leaders stress, telehealth, complimentary potential. The feedback. Is really extraordinary in terms of how patients are seeing this, the benefits they feel from it, and the ease with which they are able to engage with it said, witty executives did not offer many details, but they did have a video out on their website, and I like how the video ends and ends with this line.

Sometimes the safest place to be is in your home. Alright, the larger trend, according to healthcare IT news, the news about Optum comes on the heels of Amazon's official announcement that it will soon make its own telehealth offering available In all 50 states, they go on telehealth regulations and the uncertainty surrounding them mean that offering virtual care throughout the entire country could present.

A more complicated task than doing so in select markets. And finally, still the move suggests that major companies are confident in telehealth's longevity and individual state laws have generally supported virtual care and reimbursement parody for it as well. That's the gist of the article. Now let's talk about the so what.

And I say that to say that the, the model didn't really materialize during covid. It's just that the financial reimbursement caught up and there was an incentive, there was a safety incentive for people to embrace it. But it existed prior to that. Consumers have been ready to embrace telehealth for a long time.

It just needed a financial model, and it needed the support and the encouragement of physicians to push people in that direction. It works for systems that have managed care contracts or have alignment of incentives. With or as payers. As is the case with Kaiser Permanente, I believe it may be a mistake for providers to sit around and wait for the federal government to continue to reimburse Telehealth.

They may or may not Medicaid and state plans may or may not. Regardless, you may need to continue the practice of telehealth as a defensive measure to ensure that other practitioners don't direct care of your potential patients away from your system. I'd look at developing a lower cost delivery model for telehealth that can augment your services, tie the services to revenue capture, or at least protecting revenue loss, as well as additional services that are reimbursed potentially, and are potentially attractive enough to get some type of copay.

Telehealth is here to stay. We hear it all the time. It improves access and convenience. It cannibalizes revenue unless it gets reimbursed at the same level. We understand that. But if you choose not to do it because of that reason, you may end up having your revenue cannibalized, but in this case, it'll be cannibalized by a competitor, which is a much worse place to be.

If your system requires federal reimbursement at parity, then you may wanna start collecting data. Building the case, making that case available to people that are influencing that type of decision. Get it in front of Chime, get it in front of the American Hospital Association, people that are on the hill who are having discussions right now around the viability of reimbursing telehealth.

At parody long-term. If that is what's required for you to be successful with telehealth, then make the case, get the information out there. That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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