{"id":10045,"date":"2020-05-07T02:22:17","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T07:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/?p=10045"},"modified":"2026-03-11T07:09:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T12:09:27","slug":"phenomenal-growth-of-virtual-telehealth-visits-due-to-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/phenomenal-growth-of-virtual-telehealth-visits-due-to-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Telehealth sees a Phenomenal Growth of Visits Due To COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Telehealth<\/span><\/a> is seeing phenomenal growth following the <\/span>coronavirus pandemic<\/span><\/a>, not out of choice though, it’s mainly because of the severity of the situation. Either use telehealth, or perish, since no other alternatives seem to be working. The growth attributed to smaller practices has been highlighted in the media, here are some health system experiences that need to be elaborated.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The most significant example that needs mention here is of <\/span>CT Lin<\/span><\/a>, the CMIO at <\/span>UCHealth<\/span><\/a>, who very graciously shared the following graph comparing in-person visits (red) to virtual visits (blue) for part of 2019-2020 with ‘Healthcare IT Today’<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>[vc_single_image image=”10047″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”]

Note:<\/strong> The 2 blips reflected in red line seem to be for Thanksgiving and Christmas\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

One cannot disregard the inflection point indicating <\/span>virtual visits<\/span><\/a> bypassing in-person visits. Interestingly, CT Lin described their telehealth experience prior to COVID-19 stating\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“We came up with all sorts of leadership plans to increase <\/span>video visits<\/span><\/a>: more education to front-line physicians (not helpful); sending experts to clinic to tout the benefits (nope); introducing video visits to clinicians already on bundled payments, such as surgeons whose post-op visits were no-fee (slight adoption). Video visit adoption was a local phenomenon: a few docs found it useful and did several hundred visits that way over the course of a year, and most others did not try it. Finally, we did get some traction by dedicating some urgent care docs to Virtual Urgent Care, for either a flat $49 fee or co-pay with participating insurers. For the most part though,nothing at all.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Going into March 2020, CT Lin stated that UCHealth saw fewer than 100 video visits a week, following a week later, the number had increased to 3000+ visits per day.\u00a0 The year 2019, CT Lin explained that they did only 2700 virtual visits ( almost a dozen a day) and currently the health facility was doing 3000+ visits per day, undoubtedly a phenomenal increase.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It goes without saying that CT Lin is an innovative CMIO with a foresight to anticipate the growth of telemedicine, and in accordance making sure they were ready to fulfil the demands. Having a single Epic EHR, the IT at UCHealth worked over a year to integrate a two-way <\/span>telehealth<\/span><\/a> video system from Vidyo within their system. These efforts paid them dividends, setting them up for the outstanding growth of virtual visits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Following the culmination of <\/span>COVID-19<\/span><\/a> at some point in time, we are going to hear a lot of similar stories of how technology helped them control the dangerous COVID-19, this is just one of those examples.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Taking a cue from UCHealth’s experience, it can be determined t<\/span>hat telehealth technology\u00a0 will play a dominant role in the virtual space. Integration of the virtual platform with the health systems EMR has taken off, as <\/span>Epic’s App Orchard<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 for telehealth supposedly is currently in use by 15 providers,<\/span><\/p>\n

The rapid explosion of telehealth across Epic’s clients has been highlighted by the company in a press release, notably 200+ Epic customers have set up telehealth <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

platforms with their help. Of significance are these stats that the press release highlighted:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>