“Today there are so many threats out there, and I think that’s why asynchronous care is gaining traction. The reality is that many direct-to-consumer options don’t want our complex, multi-problem patients. They want the low-hanging fruit – these common conditions asynchronous care treats so effectively and efficiently, that then lead to downstream revenue. And what I often tell other healthcare executives is that you have to be careful with letting these competitors have that low-hanging fruit.”
These important words come courtesy of Dr. Brett Oliver, Chief Medical Information Officer at Baptist Health in Kentucky. Healthcare IT News turned to Dr. Oliver to dive deep into the key challenges Baptist Health faces around patient access,, provider capacity, and interoperability—and discuss why they turned to Bright.md to address them.
In the article, Dr. Oliver shares the impact and learnings we’ve unlocked together since launching our asynchronous telehealth solution for common conditions— alongside Navigate by Bright.md—to deliver convenient, quality care to people across Kentucky, Illinois, southern Indiana, and Tennessee.
Here are four key takeaways from the piece in Healthcare IT News.
Takeaway #1: Capacity constraints and provider efficiency remain top of mind, making interoperability and integration critical.
“The other critical challenge we wanted to solve is one that every healthcare delivery organization faces right now – provider efficiency,” Dr. Oliver shares with Healthcare IT News. “Far too many digital tools have disregarded interoperability and integration with EHRs, and have actually added to the administrative burdens and unnecessary work that frustrate providers–and keep them from practicing at the top of their license and building relationships with patients.”
Improving providers’ experiences and alleviating administrative burdens with digital health tools isn’t a new topic of conversation, but the pandemic has created more urgency than ever before. In our conversations with providers and healthcare executives like Dr. Oliver, we continue to discuss the urgent crises of staffing shortages and burnout, as well as solutions to long-term issues and ripple effects on overall care delivery and outcomes.
As Dr. Oliver said, to unlock true efficiency, virtual care tools must be designed with and for providers, while integrating seamlessly into their workflows.
“When Baptist was considering how to drive efficiencies and meet changing patient expectations to keep them coming back for all of their care needs, [Bright.md] exceeded expectations in terms of configurability, ease of use and the breadth of conditions covered,” the article highlights.
Takeaway #2: Time is precious–for your patients, your providers, and your internal staff leading telehealth delivery, digital health integrations, EHR operations, and more.
As Dr. Oliver shares in the article, the reality for all digital health tools that are brought into health systems–including Bright.md–is they touch many teams, from implementation through ongoing operations to ensure seamless integration, care delivery, and, ultimately, the best possible patient and provider experiences, all while lowering the cost of care.
“Implementation of the telemedicine technology was smooth,” the article states.“[Bright.md] helped Baptist Health get set up, working closely with Baptist’s IT team and helping with a marketing campaign to educate and engage patients. The staff has been pleased to see the response in terms of patient adoption and patient and provider satisfaction.”
Time is a critical indicator of success for Bright.md, since efficiency is always top of mind. For us, that includes provider time to deliver care, patient wait-times, and the time it takes of all staff we partner with. At Baptist Health, we’re saving time across the board.
- Reducing provider time to deliver care for low-acuity conditions: According to Dr. Oliver, it takes, on average, less than five minutes for his team to deliver care for low-acuity conditions using Bright.md.
“That is significantly less than what we’ve seen with other virtual care platforms, and such a drastic reduction in time our providers are spending on things like ear infections or UTIs – meaning they can spend more time with patients who need that face-to-face care. It also means providers don’t have to spend as much time in Epic because Bright.md automates much of the documentation, billing and prescribing, and it’s integrated into their existing workflows.”
- Delivering convenience and quality for patients without the wait: Consumers want quick, easy care these days, said Dr. Oliver. “Healthcare is slow to catch up to other consumer industries, but it’s important for us and our patients to keep that wait time to a minimum. Even while the omicron surge has been particularly challenging for our already strained urgent care teams, we’ve been able to keep the time for patients to get their diagnosis, treatment plan and any prescriptions ordered to their pharmacy of choice from their provider through Bright.md in less than 25 minutes on average.”
- Saving resources with evidence-based and vetted clinical interviews: “The resources required to build and roll out more than 25 eVisits in our Epic EHR and maintain them ourselves with the latest clinical guidelines was more than we wanted to permanently invest in,” said. Dr. Oliver “There also is a speed to market for us with Bright.md. Even if we could build out all the eVisits we wanted to – which we thought about – it would take a couple of years likely to design, vet and build 25 clinical conditions that the vendor can treat asynchronously.”
Takeaway #3: Asynchronous care–when done right–is an effective, quality way to treat common conditions.
Because the type of asynchronous telehealth we deliver is still new to so many, Bright.md talks with clinical leaders and healthcare executives often about how we measure the quality of our care to diagnose and effectively treat low-acuity conditions. As Dr. Oliver shares with Healthcare IT News, Bright.md’s asynchronous solution is proving its value by ensuring patients don’t need to seek additional care for the conditions they’re using our tool to find care for.
“We did an audit of 100 charts and found that 87% of patients did not need to seek additional care for the same problem after their eVisit,” explained Dr. Oliver. “That is reassuring that this is not ‘add-on’ care.”
Takeaway #4: Patients will keep looking for convenient care when they need it, and they have plenty of options.
As the article highlights, we ask patients who use our solution where they would have gone for care for their symptoms had they not had access to asynchronous telehealth. Thirty-two percent of people say they would have gone outside Baptist Health to get care from a retail clinic or direct-to-consumer option.
And as Dr. Oliver observes in the article, there are many threats today and “you have to be careful with letting these competitors have that low-hanging fruit.”
“We know our patients first turn to Baptist Health because we have a reputation for quality care, and if we don’t provide asynchronous care and other innovative options, patients will keep looking – especially when they want convenient, online care for things like an ear infection or a UTI,” explains Dr. Oliver.
