Bakul Patel, Google’s Sr. Director of Global Digital Health Strategy & Regulation

Digital Health

Patients and Providers Report Different Telehealth Experiences

Patients are more likely to report a positive telehealth experience than providers, at least according to Zocdoc’s new Healthcare Experience Report that broke down many of the highs and lows of delivering virtual care over the past two years.

Zocdoc analyzed the trends from its appointment booking platform between May 2020 and May 2022, then conducted patient and provider surveys to uncover insights into how care experiences evolved throughout the pandemic. The final report got pretty granular with different specialties and care types, but delivered a few overarching themes worth taking a look at.

If you’re more of a visual learner, Zocdoc also put together an infographic that does a good job summarizing the main findings.

Differing perspectives between patients and providers are common. Just over 30% of patients surveyed indicated it was easier to build a relationship with their provider via telehealth due to less formality and more relatability in the interactions. Only 7% of providers felt the same way.

• Similar discrepancies were seen with tech difficulties. While 58% of providers indicated they or their patient has had tech issues during an appointment, just 30% of patients said they’d ever experienced a problem.

Mental health is the only specialty where virtual care remains dominant. No surprise here, but it was interesting to see how virtual mental health appointments have continued to overtake in-person visits over the last couple of years.

• Virtual appointments comprised 74% of mental health bookings in May 2020, 85% in May 2021, and now account for 87% of appointments. Survey respondents cited convenience and the benefits of at-home comforts as reasons they appreciate virtual mental health visits.

Telehealth is a supplement, not a substitute. In May 2020, one-third of all appointments booked via Zocdoc were telehealth visits. By May 2022, that number had declined to 17%, and it dwindled to just 9% if you exclude mental health appointments.

• Although telehealth is well above its 1% pre-pandemic numbers, 77% of patients reported that they’re still leaning towards a combination of in-person / hybrid care. This is easily seen in the rebooking trends, where over half of virtual visits with a new OB-GYN, eye doctor, or dentist resulted in an in-person follow-up. 

The Takeaway

We’ve seen many of the themes from Zocdoc’s report before, but it’s nice to wrap some numbers around them from an appointment booking perspective as opposed to the usual claim lines or anecdotes. The discrepancies between patient and provider views on telehealth were also good additions that get studied less frequently, as were other hidden gems like the fact that 36% of providers have seen a patient’s pet during a video appointment.

Explore Nuance’s Personalized Patient Experience

Personalized digital experiences drive better outcomes for patients and providers. Explore how Nuance is using AI automation to advance the quality of service across the care journey here.

The Wire

• G4A Keynote: Bayer’s digital health accelerator G4A kicked off its annual conference with a keynote from the FDA’s former CDO Bakul Patel, who recently made headlines with his move to lead Google’s global regulatory strategy. The complete 20 minute conversation is up on YouTube and tackles everything from the government’s role in healthcare to early disease detection, and is worth checking out given how Patel’s main focuses are now closely tied to Google’s main focuses.

• The Layoff Landscape: This week brought another wave of digital health layoffs as D2C health company Ro reduced its headcount by 15% and Medicaid tech startup Circulo Health cut 50% of its employees. The news adds to a quickly growing round of layoffs as companies reassess expansion moves made during the height of the bull market. If you’re hiring in digital health, there have also been over 1,200 people recently let go from Noom (810), Carbon Health (250), Truepill (150), and Thirty Madison (24).

• Gut Check: Medical device startup Alimetry received FDA clearance for its non-invasive wearable device for diagnosing gastric disorders such as gastroparesis and dyspepsia. The Gastric Alimetry patch captures digestive patterns from the skin surface before and after a meal and then delivers clinical reports to help inform diagnosis and support personalized treatment.

• RPM Adoption Lagging: A survey of 10k healthcare professionals from Walmart and Medscape found that remote patient monitoring adoption is lagging despite significant investment over the past two years. Only 22% of rural and 28% of non-rural providers currently use RPM tools, although 65% of rural providers consider RPM beneficial for patients. The respondents cited poor technology access and low engagement as patient barriers to adoption, as well as practice barriers such as a lack of technology infrastructure and liability concerns.

• Digital Health Regulatory Pathways: A new collaboration between the Digital Medicine Society and several healthcare heavyweights is looking to create an open-access resource to help digital health startups navigate the regulatory process. The Digital Health Regulatory Pathways project brings together representatives from Google, Sidekick Health, the FDA, and the Consumer Technology Association to design a playbook for implementing regulatory strategies earlier in the healthcare product development cycle, with a full launch expected sometime in early 2023.

• BUMP Study: Nonprofit health data company 4YouandMe launched an ambitious study to track data on ~1,000 pregnancies through connected devices and regular symptom tracking reports. The Better Understanding the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy study is notable given the sheer volume of data it aims to collect through Garmin smartwatches, an Oura smartring, and a Bodyport cardiac scale, which should create a rich data set on the dramatic physical changes that occur during pregnancy while helping to guide better treatment for complications.

• Telehealth Waiver Expiration: Only 12 states still have their pandemic-era telehealth waivers that allow patients to have virtual visits with out-of-state physicians, with waivers in other states such as California and New Jersey set to expire soon within the next month. In an interview with NBC News, Johns Hopkins Medical Director Brian Hasselfeld said that nearly 1 in 10 of the health system’s telehealth visits are with patients who live in states where the system doesn’t have operations, and that it’s been difficult to explain to patients that they might soon have to drive across state lines to have a call with the same care team.

• Caption’s Home Echo Service: Ultrasound AI startup Caption Health unveiled its new Caption Care service, which provides in-home cardiac wellness assessments through a partnership with major home care company Portamedic. The Caption Care service will allow Portamedic technicians (who probably aren’t sonographers) to perform AI-guided echo exams in patient homes. This is the first nationwide home echo service we’ve seen, but it isn’t completely unexpected given recent advancements in ultrasound accessibility (portability, cost, AI guidance/reporting, connectivity) and healthcare’s continued shift towards patient homes.