Jacquelyn B. Cawley shares information about telehealth, tele monitoring and walk-in care for patients.
Learn more about BayCare’s telehealth services including BayCare Anywhere and Walk-In Care
Telehealth, Walk-In Care and Telemonitoring
Featured Speaker:
Jacquelyn B. Cawley, DO
Dr. Cawley is the Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory Care and Clinical Integration at BayCare Health System. Through 20 years of leadership, Dr. Cawley has served as the interim dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine and vice president of the University Health Services and Clinical Affairs at the University of New England. She has also been vice president of population health at Martin’s Point Health Care and president of the Department of Family Medicine at Maine Medical Center. Transcription:
Telehealth, Walk-In Care and Telemonitoring
Introduction: This is Bay Care HealthChat, another podcast from Bay Care health System. Here's Melanie Cole.
Melanie Cole: With the advancement of technology we've seen incredible changes, in the way patients and providers are able to manage healthcare. This is Bay Care HealthChat. I'm Melanie Cole and today we're discussing tele-health and tele-monitoring. Joining me is Dr. Jacquelyn Cawley. She's the Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory Care and Clinical Integration at BayCare. Dr. Cawley, I'm so glad to have you join us for such an exciting topic. Please explain a little for the listeners, what is tele-health? What's kind of been the evolution of it?
Dr. Cawley: Tele-health is where people can interact with a provider, a physician or other people on the care team using technology. So it's as simple as using your smartphone or your PC and through a secure process, we have the ability to use the cameras on those phones or the PC, and be able to have communication just as you would with FaceTiming a loved one or a friend, or using Skype for example. And so it allows us to have interactions as a provider and a care team to provide medical services to patients and their families.
Host: Wow. Isn't that amazing? So tell us how it helps the community about some of the benefits and how it can even allow people in more rural areas, more access to specialists. How are you using it? How is it benefiting the community?
Dr. Cawley: Well, it benefits the communities in a few ways. Here in the Tampa Bay area, we have hurricane season and when hurricanes come, it can make it very difficult for certain medical services to be provided in the office setting. And we want to keep people safe and at home. In those situations, virtual care or tele-health is the perfect way to be able to meet your medical needs, and in a case of a hurricane or other sort of natural disaster that keeps you from being able to, you know, leave your home or your business site. The other thing that's really nice about it is that it takes a provider, a physician from where they are in their office and brings them to wherever the patient is. So you may be in a very rural community and not have access to certain types of specialists. Those specialists can be in a city setting many miles away, sometimes hundreds of miles away, and still be able to interact with a patient and provide services to them, and do consults and follow-up visits and that kind of thing. So it really is about bringing the care to where the person is. And I think that that's what is so incredible about it. Right now we have cold and flu season and certainly if you're sick and you don't want to bring your, you know, your germs with you to the office place or to an urgent care center or your doctor's office, you can simply from the comfort of your own home, be able to bring a physician to you in order to provide care and services.
Host: So how does that work then? Tell us how tele-medicine is changing landscape of medical practice at BayCare. How would something like that work if somebody thinks they have the flu and they go on virtual care, how is diagnosis determined?
Dr. Cawley: When you're working on the phone or from your PC in your home, basically you're giving your symptoms to the physician who is interacting with you. This is really good for things like a sinus infection that you think you may have cold or flu. If you've been coughing quite a bit, you can provide a lot of information and the physician who's seeing you virtually can take in a lot of information just from looking at you. We can take that up even another step further by using our kiosk at Publix, we have over 30 Publix’s in our local area where you can actually do walk in care, and you can get your vital signs done. You're interacting again with the provider in a small enclosed private space, but they can also do things like listen to your heart and your lungs because we've got devices in those rooms where they, you just place it onto your heart or lung and take a deep breath, and the physician can hear it just as if they're in the same room with you. You can check your vital signs, like your blood pressure and your temperature, your pulse rate, and send that right over to them as well. So they can take all that information in and then quickly be able to determine do you need to have another level of care or can they provide the care that you need to meet your needs? And if you need any prescriptions, they can electronically send those to your pharmacy of choice so those can be waiting for you very quickly.
Host: What about cost effectiveness? What about insurance implications? Are they on board with this type of virtual care and what do you see happening in the trends for this?
Dr. Cawley: So currently we're offering this for all of our own team members and their dependents who are on our health insurance policy at BayCare. We also have a contract with Humana, more and more of the insurance companies or payers out in the market. They're seeing this as very cost effective and really well adopted by folks when they use it. We find that about 40% of people who go on for the first time will return to us for another virtual visit for themselves or a member of their family, sometime within a year, which is really great. It's a much cheaper way to get your healthcare services if you need to. If you go to the emergency department, oftentimes you have to wait quite a while in order to get to be seen and bill can be quite costly as well with more out of pocket cost to the patient themselves.
In the urgent care center, it's a little bit more cost effective, but again sometimes can have wait times, and many of the things that people go to urgent care or emergency departments for could easily be taken care of with a virtual visit, the virtual visit that we charge for is $59. And if the insurance company does pay for it, then you only have a copay and all of that is done as you're registering for the visit online, very easy to do. You simply download an App, go to the App, it kind of guides you to how to register and go online. And then you pick the physician or brother provider of your choice and can be seen usually within about a five minute time frame. Again, very cost effective. And because of this, we're seeing more and more of the payers willing to pay for this and included in people's benefits. So we expect to see a lot more payers come on board over the next year.
Host: So what kinds of conditions do you feel, I mean people are have comorbid conditions from diabetes or maybe they have heart disease, but then there's also colds and flus and rash, and with kids there's so many things pinkeye and everything else. What kinds of conditions do you think are the best for people to use BayCare Anywhere? Virtual care, tele-medicine, all of these services?
Dr. Cawley: So any of the above that you mentioned actually could work depending on the scenario for that individual patient. So cold and flus, as I mentioned, you know, if you think you have a sinus infection or an ear infection, swimmer's ear, you know, pinkeye, those kinds of things, those are very amenable. Any types of rashes, you know pretty much anything that you can show somebody or describe to someone using a camera on your phone or your PC. In the event of a chronic condition like diabetes or high blood pressure, if you're checking your sugars and you think you have a concern, maybe they're running a little bit high that day and you're not feeling well. Being able to have that comfort of knowing that you can call someone up and have a conversation and be guided to the best level of care, I think can be very, very beneficial to patients. So it may be just continue to take your medications and let's make sure that you've got an appointment coming up with your primary care provider very quickly or it could be, maybe your blood pressure is running a little bit high today. It would be better for you to go to an urgent care center and have this evaluated a little bit more comprehensively. In that case, we waive the fee for the tele-visit and if they're going to one of our urgent care centers, we just take that fee away, don't charge them for that visit and make sure they get to the right level of care. Same as if we sent them to the emergency department. So I think pretty much anything can be amenable to a virtual visit to answer questions, be able to give basic care and then help to guide you to the most appropriate level of care as needed.
Host: Well, it certainly does transform your decision making scenario in the whole healthcare system really. Dr. Cawley, so before we wrap up, where do you see this going? What's the future of virtual care and what would you like listeners to take away from this incredible episode on tele-medicine and BayCare Anywhere virtual care.
Dr. Cawley: I would say that we're going to see more and more care being virtual or more and more ability for patients and others in our communities to interact with the health system virtually. And I think that that's really good because it allows us to have much more communication on an ongoing basis and much more touch points between the healthcare system and people where they are and with what they're doing every single day. I think we'll continue to see many follow-up visits or basic things that can be done with your primary care physician or other specialists being done, you know, online more and more frequently in the future. So you may have an initial consult with someone, but then can do a follow-up that is at a much more convenient time for you without the need to, you know, worry about transportation or leaving your job. So I think we'll see a continued rise of virtual care going forward. I think it'll be even more of an important part of our whole medical ecosystem where we're wrapping all the services that people need and making them as convenient and accessible to people as possible. Really allowing for that access to care when and where a person needs it. So I really see this moving forward and I would say, don't be afraid of the technology. Go ahead and try it. Give it a try. I've used it myself and I found it to be really beneficial for myself and my own family members.
Host: Well, thank you for that answer and I'm sure that gives a sense of relief to the listeners. If you're willing to try it, then they will be too. And thank you for such great information. Very exciting. And that concludes this episode of BayCare HealthChat. Head on over to our website at Baycare.org for more information on BayCare Anywhere and to get connected with one of our providers. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and all the other BayCare podcasts. Until next time, I'm Melanie Cole.
Telehealth, Walk-In Care and Telemonitoring
Introduction: This is Bay Care HealthChat, another podcast from Bay Care health System. Here's Melanie Cole.
Melanie Cole: With the advancement of technology we've seen incredible changes, in the way patients and providers are able to manage healthcare. This is Bay Care HealthChat. I'm Melanie Cole and today we're discussing tele-health and tele-monitoring. Joining me is Dr. Jacquelyn Cawley. She's the Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Ambulatory Care and Clinical Integration at BayCare. Dr. Cawley, I'm so glad to have you join us for such an exciting topic. Please explain a little for the listeners, what is tele-health? What's kind of been the evolution of it?
Dr. Cawley: Tele-health is where people can interact with a provider, a physician or other people on the care team using technology. So it's as simple as using your smartphone or your PC and through a secure process, we have the ability to use the cameras on those phones or the PC, and be able to have communication just as you would with FaceTiming a loved one or a friend, or using Skype for example. And so it allows us to have interactions as a provider and a care team to provide medical services to patients and their families.
Host: Wow. Isn't that amazing? So tell us how it helps the community about some of the benefits and how it can even allow people in more rural areas, more access to specialists. How are you using it? How is it benefiting the community?
Dr. Cawley: Well, it benefits the communities in a few ways. Here in the Tampa Bay area, we have hurricane season and when hurricanes come, it can make it very difficult for certain medical services to be provided in the office setting. And we want to keep people safe and at home. In those situations, virtual care or tele-health is the perfect way to be able to meet your medical needs, and in a case of a hurricane or other sort of natural disaster that keeps you from being able to, you know, leave your home or your business site. The other thing that's really nice about it is that it takes a provider, a physician from where they are in their office and brings them to wherever the patient is. So you may be in a very rural community and not have access to certain types of specialists. Those specialists can be in a city setting many miles away, sometimes hundreds of miles away, and still be able to interact with a patient and provide services to them, and do consults and follow-up visits and that kind of thing. So it really is about bringing the care to where the person is. And I think that that's what is so incredible about it. Right now we have cold and flu season and certainly if you're sick and you don't want to bring your, you know, your germs with you to the office place or to an urgent care center or your doctor's office, you can simply from the comfort of your own home, be able to bring a physician to you in order to provide care and services.
Host: So how does that work then? Tell us how tele-medicine is changing landscape of medical practice at BayCare. How would something like that work if somebody thinks they have the flu and they go on virtual care, how is diagnosis determined?
Dr. Cawley: When you're working on the phone or from your PC in your home, basically you're giving your symptoms to the physician who is interacting with you. This is really good for things like a sinus infection that you think you may have cold or flu. If you've been coughing quite a bit, you can provide a lot of information and the physician who's seeing you virtually can take in a lot of information just from looking at you. We can take that up even another step further by using our kiosk at Publix, we have over 30 Publix’s in our local area where you can actually do walk in care, and you can get your vital signs done. You're interacting again with the provider in a small enclosed private space, but they can also do things like listen to your heart and your lungs because we've got devices in those rooms where they, you just place it onto your heart or lung and take a deep breath, and the physician can hear it just as if they're in the same room with you. You can check your vital signs, like your blood pressure and your temperature, your pulse rate, and send that right over to them as well. So they can take all that information in and then quickly be able to determine do you need to have another level of care or can they provide the care that you need to meet your needs? And if you need any prescriptions, they can electronically send those to your pharmacy of choice so those can be waiting for you very quickly.
Host: What about cost effectiveness? What about insurance implications? Are they on board with this type of virtual care and what do you see happening in the trends for this?
Dr. Cawley: So currently we're offering this for all of our own team members and their dependents who are on our health insurance policy at BayCare. We also have a contract with Humana, more and more of the insurance companies or payers out in the market. They're seeing this as very cost effective and really well adopted by folks when they use it. We find that about 40% of people who go on for the first time will return to us for another virtual visit for themselves or a member of their family, sometime within a year, which is really great. It's a much cheaper way to get your healthcare services if you need to. If you go to the emergency department, oftentimes you have to wait quite a while in order to get to be seen and bill can be quite costly as well with more out of pocket cost to the patient themselves.
In the urgent care center, it's a little bit more cost effective, but again sometimes can have wait times, and many of the things that people go to urgent care or emergency departments for could easily be taken care of with a virtual visit, the virtual visit that we charge for is $59. And if the insurance company does pay for it, then you only have a copay and all of that is done as you're registering for the visit online, very easy to do. You simply download an App, go to the App, it kind of guides you to how to register and go online. And then you pick the physician or brother provider of your choice and can be seen usually within about a five minute time frame. Again, very cost effective. And because of this, we're seeing more and more of the payers willing to pay for this and included in people's benefits. So we expect to see a lot more payers come on board over the next year.
Host: So what kinds of conditions do you feel, I mean people are have comorbid conditions from diabetes or maybe they have heart disease, but then there's also colds and flus and rash, and with kids there's so many things pinkeye and everything else. What kinds of conditions do you think are the best for people to use BayCare Anywhere? Virtual care, tele-medicine, all of these services?
Dr. Cawley: So any of the above that you mentioned actually could work depending on the scenario for that individual patient. So cold and flus, as I mentioned, you know, if you think you have a sinus infection or an ear infection, swimmer's ear, you know, pinkeye, those kinds of things, those are very amenable. Any types of rashes, you know pretty much anything that you can show somebody or describe to someone using a camera on your phone or your PC. In the event of a chronic condition like diabetes or high blood pressure, if you're checking your sugars and you think you have a concern, maybe they're running a little bit high that day and you're not feeling well. Being able to have that comfort of knowing that you can call someone up and have a conversation and be guided to the best level of care, I think can be very, very beneficial to patients. So it may be just continue to take your medications and let's make sure that you've got an appointment coming up with your primary care provider very quickly or it could be, maybe your blood pressure is running a little bit high today. It would be better for you to go to an urgent care center and have this evaluated a little bit more comprehensively. In that case, we waive the fee for the tele-visit and if they're going to one of our urgent care centers, we just take that fee away, don't charge them for that visit and make sure they get to the right level of care. Same as if we sent them to the emergency department. So I think pretty much anything can be amenable to a virtual visit to answer questions, be able to give basic care and then help to guide you to the most appropriate level of care as needed.
Host: Well, it certainly does transform your decision making scenario in the whole healthcare system really. Dr. Cawley, so before we wrap up, where do you see this going? What's the future of virtual care and what would you like listeners to take away from this incredible episode on tele-medicine and BayCare Anywhere virtual care.
Dr. Cawley: I would say that we're going to see more and more care being virtual or more and more ability for patients and others in our communities to interact with the health system virtually. And I think that that's really good because it allows us to have much more communication on an ongoing basis and much more touch points between the healthcare system and people where they are and with what they're doing every single day. I think we'll continue to see many follow-up visits or basic things that can be done with your primary care physician or other specialists being done, you know, online more and more frequently in the future. So you may have an initial consult with someone, but then can do a follow-up that is at a much more convenient time for you without the need to, you know, worry about transportation or leaving your job. So I think we'll see a continued rise of virtual care going forward. I think it'll be even more of an important part of our whole medical ecosystem where we're wrapping all the services that people need and making them as convenient and accessible to people as possible. Really allowing for that access to care when and where a person needs it. So I really see this moving forward and I would say, don't be afraid of the technology. Go ahead and try it. Give it a try. I've used it myself and I found it to be really beneficial for myself and my own family members.
Host: Well, thank you for that answer and I'm sure that gives a sense of relief to the listeners. If you're willing to try it, then they will be too. And thank you for such great information. Very exciting. And that concludes this episode of BayCare HealthChat. Head on over to our website at Baycare.org for more information on BayCare Anywhere and to get connected with one of our providers. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and all the other BayCare podcasts. Until next time, I'm Melanie Cole.