Telehealth is Here – Getting There Quicker with Incremental Steps

By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist – #TheIncrementalist

Now on demand, I am talking to Dr. Til Jolly, CMO for Specialists on Call (SOC) Telemed who are delivering enterprise-wide telemedicine to over 450 hospitals.

Dr Jolly is an Emergency Room physician with a fascinating background that includes working for the NFL Super Bowl “Emergency Preparedness Team” planning super bowls around the country over multiple locations. He shares some of his experiences in that role and some of the things he learned along the way – learning from previous events, clear role assignment and division and above all practice (he’s talking about the medical teams but I’m sure that’s true for the NFL teams :-)).

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We talk about the small incremental improvements that have been adding up in Telehealth delivery – as he puts it the barriers are not technology anymore and there has been some good progress around reimbursement. In an interesting twist and different perspective he looks back with fondness at the introduction of the Fax machine and the positive impact it had on care with the ability to fax EKG’s direct to clinicians.

The resistance is no longer coming from patients and in some instances is clinicians and health systems who want to find “traditional” methods of care delivery but the writing on the wall is clear: Telehealth is here to stay and will be a major part of helping support our aging population even mitigating some of the loneliness these individuals have.

About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.

This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.