Patient Access

The CEO of a telehealth services provider explains why patients being seen remotely by physicians first can also help with accessibility, data integrity and consistency.

The number of telehealth services provided by Children's Mercy Kansas City is astounding. And they get tremendously high patient satisfaction scores. The health system's nurse director of telemedicine offers a detailed tour, with some key advice for her peers.

The group expects support for virtual care to continue after the 2024 election, but urges action as soon as possible to extend pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities past the end of the year.

Virtual care can boost satisfaction for patients and nursing staff.

It will likely adopt the standards of Chinese insurer Ping An for its online family doctor contract service.

Also, Australia's aged care research centre has received additional funding to deploy AI.

Also: Kaiser Permanente reported that an unauthorized party gained access to the email accounts of two workforce members and viewed patient health information. 

Through its partnership with DispatchHealth, MedStar Health is now providing care in patient homes after hospital stays and emergency visits, or through virtual healthcare referrals.

New data elements related to social drivers of health, such as referrals to social services, improve standards-based information exchange with electronic health records, it says. 

Dugan Winkie, head of Commercial Strategy at Cedar, describes how virtual AI agent Anna offers consumers a safe space to ask questions and make payments.