eConsults: Essential Part of Telehealth for Chronic Care Management

Telehealth for Chronic Care Management Using eConsults Helps Provide Necessary Care for Patients Remotely

Across the United States, healthcare resources were directed toward fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, access to specialty care using telehealth increased significantly. Today, specialists and primary care providers use a form of telehealth called eConsults, to avoid face-to-face specialty care visits and offer better chronic care management.

Patients needing chronic care account for 76% of all physician visits. For those with chronic diseases, failure to access care can lead to high-acuity healthcare episodes, a dangerous and disruptive situation for patients, and is costly for patients, payors, and providers alike.

To avoid these adverse outcomes and to preserve specialist availability and critical healthcare resources, healthcare organizations must find ways to provide safe access to proactive primary care for patients with chronic conditions. One potential avenue for delivering this care is the use of eConsults and other forms of telehealth for chronic care management.

With eConsults, PCPs can provide virtual access to specialist-guided care, replacing the need for face-to-face specialist visits over 70% of the time, and triaging cases to ensure only the most high-acuity patients are referred for in-person appointments.

This means patients with chronic conditions can continue to receive care in a safe environment, improving patient outcomes and mitigating a backlog of more urgent care that becomes necessary when untreated conditions worsen.

Coronavirus is further interfering with access to care

The novel coronavirus pandemic has created and exacerbated several already significant barriers to accessing care. In an article from ABC News, health officer and internist Dr. Dave Choski states:

When it comes to patients hesitant to seek care due to fear of exposure to the virus, the data is striking; according to Evidation:

53% of all patients were worried about visiting a medical facility for non-coronavirus care
This includes 10% of patients who would avoid seeking care altogether. 

In addition, many other barriers to specialist care—such as financial, childcare, and transportation—have been heightened due to job losses, school closures, and stay-at-home orders. On the provider side, many specialists are not taking patients during the pandemic. Meanwhile, others are overbooked even more than usual due to their critical role in combating the pandemic.

For Chronic Patients, Care Needs Must be Addressed or Conditions Worsen

While stay-at-home orders are essential for reducing infections, patients with chronic illnesses must still be able to receive care to avoid severe adverse outcomes. According to AristaMD user Dr. Maria Barrell, via PatientEngagementHIT, “Patients with a chronic illness who do not continually make key wellness checks could see their disease states deteriorate, launching into an acute care crisis.” Such crises can be costly, risky, and even fatal to those with chronic diseases, and providing care for such patients is critical to their well-being.

Such care is also essential if health systems are to avoid being overwhelmed.

• In 2005,  133 million patients with chronic diseases, accounting for more than 45% of the U.S. population, will reach 157 million in 2020.
• Further, chronic patients account for an outsized proportion of all doctor visits and 81% of hospital admissions and 91% of prescriptions.

Increased acute health crises due to chronic patients not receiving care could therefore result in subsequent surges in ED visits as a downstream effect, with these admissions both taking over critical hospital and healthcare setting capacity amidst COVID-19, as well as contributing to a significant backlog of patients seeking care as the healthcare system is met with a second surge of patients following the height of COVID-19.

eConsults Support Chronic Care Management by Providing Access to Specialty Care, Minimizing In-person Appointments

eConsults are a powerful tool that can support PCPs in providing patients with access to high-quality specialist care within the primary care setting.

eConsults can replace the need for a face-to-face visit more than 70 percent of the time for routine referrals, and telehealth technology easily provides support for routine chronic care management such as check-ins and medication adjustments.

Further, eConsults also offer a method of remotely triaging to confirm which patients are high-acuity and therefore need to see specialists in person. For health organizations and medical centers already leveraging telemedicine to see patients, eConsults enable PCPs to provide necessary specialty care through entirely virtual means.

Implementing an eConsult system results in several short-term benefits amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

• PCPs can provide quick access to proactive care, resulting in improved patient health and higher overall satisfaction. This is especially true for those with chronic conditions; it’s been demonstrated that proactive care, especially via primary care, is effective in reducing the burden of chronic conditions and improving outcomes for such patients.
• As a further benefit, providing access to treatment and chronic care management through telehealth mitigates the need for patients to resort to emergency care in settings that are likely impacted with COVID-19 patients, helping reduce the risk of chronic patients being exposed to the virus.
• Finally, eConsults can help to optimize specialist appointment queues, reducing wait times following the pandemic when specialists begin taking patients once more and experience a surge of patients with unmet needs.

Amidst this healthcare crisis, patients with chronic diseases cannot be ignored. This population continues to need proactive, accessible care if their conditions are to be well-managed, and failure to do so will only exacerbate future healthcare strain.

eConsults are a promising tool demonstrating the value of telehealth for remote chronic care management, equipping primary care providers to see patients virtually, provide specialty patient care remotely, and to do all of this in a timely manner.

The COVID-19 pandemic is testing healthcare organizations at all levels, prodding at weak points and forcing decision-makers to answer difficult questions about the interaction between providers and patients and how to best equip health systems to respond to crises.

While the answers to many of these questions are not quite clear, what does seem certain is that very little will remain the same in healthcare in the coming years—and organizations willing to adapt and remain on the cutting edge will be the ones driving the industry forward as we overcome this healthcare crisis.