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High-Value Telehealth, Amazon Launch, and Nvidia’s Hospital Robots
November 18, 2024
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Together with
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“This physical AI thing is coming where your whole hospital is going to turn into an AI. You’re going to have eyes operating on your behalf, robots doing what is otherwise automatable work, and smart digital devices.”
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Nvidia VP of Healthcare Kimberly Powell
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University of Michigan researchers just delivered some compelling evidence that telehealth doesn’t increase wasteful care, and may actually reduce it in several key areas.
This wasn’t a small study. The analysis in JAMA Network Open leveraged Medicare FFS claims data spanning 578k beneficiaries across 2,552 primary care practices between 2019 and 2022.
The researchers tracked eight measures of “low-value care” – services that provide little clinical benefit while racking up costs – across four categories: office-based, laboratory, imaging, and mixed-modality services.
The practices with the highest telehealth usage (top third) showed:
- Significant reductions in unnecessary cervical cancer screenings (-2.9 per 1,000 beneficiaries)
- Lower rates of low-value thyroid testing (-40 per 1,000 beneficiaries)
- No increase in wasteful imaging or other diagnostic services
Low-value care costs the healthcare system close to $100B annually, and while wasteful services have been extensively looked at using Medicare data, this was the first study to do so within the context of telehealth.
- On one hand, virtual visits eliminate chances for clinicians to perform low-value services that need to be performed in-person.
- On the other, it’s hard to imagine that the inability to conduct a physical examination won’t lead to more clinical uncertainty and low-value diagnostic testing, although that’s exactly what this research seems to disprove.
The Takeaway
This study tackles one of telehealth’s most persistent criticisms head-on, and the lack of a clear link between telehealth and low-value care should reassure policymakers weighing how to finance and regulate the segment going forward.
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- Amazon Goes After Hims: It was only a matter of time, and Amazon is finally getting in on the direct-to-consumer action with fixed monthly pricing for Prime members to get help with conditions like erectile dysfunction and hair loss. As part of Amazon One Medical Pay-per-visit, the new services include visits and any necessary medication, similar to competing offerings from companies like Hims (its stock nosedive clearly reflects the overlap). At least Amazon isn’t going after Hims’ newfound GLP-1 revenue train… yet.
- MA Plans Targeting Veterans: A STAT investigation put an unsavory spotlight on Medicare Advantage plans collecting billions from the federal government by targeting veterans with plans that supposedly complement their VA coverage. Nearly 42% of Medicare-eligible veterans also enroll in private MA plans with names like “Patriot Plan” or “Courage MA,” yet this frequently means the government is paying twice for the same patient’s care. Medicare gives MA plans a set monthly rate for each enrollee to cover all Medicare-eligible services, which creates problems when the VA pays for care the MA plan could have covered.
- Good News for Decentralized Trials: A Lindus Health survey revealed that 63% of U.S. healthcare consumers would be more likely to participate in clinical trials if they offered telehealth options for visit completion. The good news for decentralized trials was that every one of the 136 respondents indicated they would be “comfortable” using technology to report their data, but the fact that none felt “very comfortable” underscored the continued need to provide participants with other relevant resources to continue building confidence.
- Arcadia Expands Data Platform: Arcadia unveiled Enhanced Benchmarks and Arcadia Vista Push to improve value-based care performance through actionable data insights. Enhanced Benchmarks helps healthcare orgs analyze market-based cost, utilization, risk, and quality measures, while Vista Push is an analytics activation layer for scalable delivery of custom insights to providers via email. These solutions “set a vision” for Arcadia’s roadmap following its CareJourney acquisition, which now includes a Network Modeler and Contract IQ suite slated for next quarter.
- Nvidia Robots Coming to Hospitals: Nvidia told Business Insider that it’s planning to land robots in hospitals to help with everything from linen deliveries to X-rays. It’ll supposedly take “a couple of years” for physical AI systems to be embraced in healthcare by getting three computers working in tandem: one to train the AI, another “digital twin” to simulate the physical world, and a third to operate the robot. Nvidia is already partnering with digital twin provider Mark III to simulate hospital environments for AI development, and NVentures has been spreading its chips around with other big investments into Abridge and Hippocratic.
- How Will AI Scribes Shake Out? UNC Professor Spencer Dorn shared a peek into his crystal ball for the ambient AI scribe market, which is quickly evolving to support workflows downstream from documentation. As more scribes aim to summarize records, generate billing codes, and even help with clinical decision making, Dorn predicts the rift will widen between the solutions with – and without – the deep EHR integration needed to perform these activities. That could mean that the EHRs themselves will eventually crown the victors.
- PAs and RNs Help Burnout: A JAMA study of 10k family physicians reached the unsurprising conclusion that burnout is highly correlated with EHR time and poor team efficiency. The more interesting takeaway was that supporting physicians with registered nurses and physician assistants was the best way to make that happen. Collaborating with PAs made physicians 13% more likely to see “appropriate home EHR time,” while working with RNs was associated with 35% better team efficiency.
- MedStar + Dispatch: MedStar Health expanded its partnership with acute home care provider DispatchHealth to ensure the continuity of care for patients discharged from its four Baltimore hospitals. The program will continue improving care transitions by sending DispatchHealth medical professionals within 72 hours of discharge from the hospital or ED. During the visits, a wide range of treatments can be provided, including immediate point-of-care labs, IV fluids, medications, and EKGs.
- Dario Supports DTC Pharma: DarioHealth is picking up steam with its Dario Connect platform – formerly Twill Care – after announcing a partnership with an unnamed “top pharmaceutical company” to advance its direct-to-consumer initiatives. DarioConnect will help expand connections across patient populations that are candidates for a new psoriasis medication, and collect insights on patient outcomes while using its community-building capabilities to enhance program engagement.
- VitalHub Acquires Strata: Provider enablement platform VitalHub acquired Strata Health Solutions for $22.9M to integrate its software for improving care access and navigation. Strata has over 80 health system partners and supports more than 800k patient transitions annually, while also extending VitalHub’s solution set into the electronic referral market. The acquisition is VitalHub’s largest in a long line of 19 other M&A moves.
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